Wild Blue Magic

I have a new found love for writing poetry.

For years, I adamantly declared, "I'm not a poet."

I said this even though I began writing poetry when I was twelve years old. I compiled the handwritten prose into a journal and mostly kept them to myself. Through the years, I've taken classes and it was after one such class (after workshopping a few of the poems I'd written expressly for the class), I decided once and for all, poetry writing was not my forte.

After that, I stuck to my fiction and stopped writing the poetry I'd always written just for myself. It had been my way of capturing how I saw the world but I let it go.

Then last fall I watched a leaf helicopter to the ground and had the line "there is beauty in decay" whisper through my mind. I wrote those words down and they grew into a poem, I felt compelled to share in my September 24, 2023 post "Becoming Ghosts."

I took inspired action and now, guess what? I write poetry. I find I write a lot of poetry—free verse and Haiku.

All I needed to fully embody the poet I decided to be at the age of twelve was that one spark of inspiration—and to believe I was again. That day last fall, it was that dying leaf. For many of the poems I've written lately, it's the ocean and the thought of what legend, myth and my imagination describe as living in the deep.

One such poem follows.

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Wild Blue Magic ~ poem and photo by Joie Lesin

Wild Blue Magic

Wild blue magic

washes over me.

Pulls me down.

Wraps me

in its liquid arms.

Fills my ears

with siren song.

Pushes me up

toward the surface

then

tugs me back

to the sandy floor.

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Perhaps, what I feel now isn't a new found love but a rekindled one. Finally, now as an adult, I'm able to accept what the twelve year old version of me intuitively knew.

I am, in fact, a poet.

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What's Coming Next?

On April 26, I welcome Karen Hulene Bartell to the blog again to talk about the legend that influenced her upcoming release, Fox Tale.

On April 28, the next issue of my newsletter will be delivered to subscribers. To receive it—and read the back issues—please sign up below.

Until next time, are there forgotten dreams or abilities from your childhood that are worth revisiting?

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About the Author

Minnesota-based author, Joie Lesin is a life-long fiction writer and the author of The Passenger. She has long been fascinated by anything otherworldly including ghosts. She loves to write a good ghost story—especially when it includes a touch of romance.