I have found that anyone who comes from the realm of the creative process feels separated from world in some way. As a writer of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and music, it can be a daunting emotional roller coaster, albeit, one I wouldn’t trade for anything. As with any gift a person has, writing can bring in sunshine or dark clouds. However, be it sunny or rainy, the words are woven into a story, poem, or song that reaches out and lifts and comforts a weary heart or a lost soul.
At times I write stories that come out of nowhere, packed with emotions and experiences that aren’t mine, leaving me either laughing or weeping in their wake. The poem Incomitatus, however, is one I wrote specifically about me. As a writer and a spiritual being having a human experience, it feels hard to connect many times to people and the world. I often feel as if I have one foot in this world and one foot in another, trying to balance out the differences. In that journey, I have allowed myself to settle for less due to low confidence, then learn the value of who I am, and thereby gain confidence, but I have yet to find that soul who is my companion. Incomitatus is Latin for unaccompanied, or alone.
I don’t know how it is for all writers, but even though I know I have many friends and am not truly alone, there is a loneliness that can’t be filled except with writing. In that respect, I will probably have one pocket of my soul that is lonely all the time, at least until it latches itself to the next string of words I weave together and quenches its thirst. It’s an ongoing dilemma that is bittersweet 🙂
Incomitatus
They say I am so very blessed
To know the art of verse
But let me tell you, readers all
There also is a curse
For none shall know the poet’s heart
or scarce can feel the lines
Nor can the poet have full joy
Without her equal kind
No ear can know the rhythm full
No soul can hold the depth
Unless the poet’s heart have ye
And with it ye have wept
The sadness for the poet comes
When her equal is not seen
For unless they have a poet’s heart
They cannot grasp the dream
So I may write of sorrowed times
And joyful days of glee
But while I pen,
I mourn my life
For where is the rhyme for me.
©Kimberly Jo Smith 2024
From the book Divergent Paths by Kimberly Jo Smith available on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Divergent-Paths-Kimberly-Jo-Smith/dp/B0CKGS9B9R