I'm considering rebuilding
A wall I levelled;
I've no shortage of materials,
But I lack
The man power,
And the willingness,
To rebuild this wall
Of unforgiveness,
On a foundation
Of forgetfulness.

Faded and lying on the ground,
was a leaf.
A leaf of love.
A leaf of inspiration.
It was a leaf of spring.

Flowing with the air,
was a leaf.
A leaf of gold.
A leaf of soul.
It was a leaf of spring.

Lying dead in the morning light,
was a leaf.
A leaf of spring.

You know poetry is your life
when you initially wake
and you're already in a conditioned mind state
reciting lines in your head

You know poetry is your life
when you go to bed
and rhymes are drifting you
away into a sleeping state

You know poetry is your life
when you are driving along
and you suddenly pull over
just to scribble down some narrative thoughts

You know poetry is your life
when you are at work
and you refrain from doing your job
just so you can jot down some formal expression

You know poetry is your life
when you are reading the mail
and even names and numbers
inspire a distinctive phrase

You know poetry is your life
when thy words of choice
become rapid fluency
and part of the Shakespearean language

You know poetry is your life
when random collections seamlessly take over
and are scattered everywhere
from journals, to loose papers, hard drives, & accumulating memory

You know poetry is your life
when you begin to realize
and everyday you must traditionally release
the spoken word writes to its divine legacy

You know poetry is your life
when you are typing away
and all of a sudden,
you lose your precious work
yet you can still retrieve the files
from one's own mental database

Poetry is your life
Life is your poetry
Whether you live a good one
Whether you live a bad one
Poetry is real
Poetry is fake
What is it really?
What is it not?

Poetry is your life
A therapeutical salvation
Cycle through the emotional manifestation
Peddle away from the soul's padlock
A spiraling staircase that leads you to freedom
The universal process of exhibiting experience
It's a divine intervention
Revelations of truth and discovery
Creating artful expression of one's existence
You know poetry is your life

If the purpose of life is to make art;
I suppose,
All true artists go insane
Baring the entirety of life
On their shoulders.

Forsythias flower now,
A shock of yellow petals
Matching my Daffodils.
Pure yellow,
Brighter than the sun.
Galaxies of petal-stars
Hanging from spiral arms.
As numerous as a shoal of fish,
Or flock of birds.
Nature stuns us with its numbers.

Winter hangs on
With chilling grip.
But blossoms like these hold promise
Of warmer days.
My crocuses were first:
Defiant spears thrusting into the frosty air.
And now the second wave is here:
Flower after flower,
Bird after bird:
Robins and Blue ****,
Blackbirds and Sparrows.
Pesky gnats are out
As everything awakes
From hibernation.
Yes Spring is here,
Showing us once more
The sheer resilience of Life.

Paul Butters