I Am Really Just A Tambourine

I Am Really Just A Tambourine

Good poetry makes the universe 
admit a secret: 

I am really just a tambourine,
grab hold, play me against you. 

      I've enjoyed this poem for quite some time, Self Portrait by David Whyte. You can read it below, but first, I think David Whyte captured the power of poetry in this statement: "The discipline of poetry is in overhearing yourself say truths from which it is impossible to retreat. Poetry is a break for freedom. In a sense all poems are good; all poems are an emblem of courage and the attempt to say the unsayable; but only a few are able to speak to something universal yet personal and distinct at the same time; to create a door through which others can walk into what previously seemed unobtainable realms, in the passage of a few short lines."

Self Portrait 

David Whyte 

It doesn’t interest me if there is one God

or many gods.

I want to know if you belong or feel

abandoned.

If you know despair or can see it in others.

I want to know

if you are prepared to live in the world

with its harsh need

to change you. If you can look back

with firm eyes

saying this is where I stand. I want to know

if you know

how to melt into that fierce heat of living

falling toward

the center of your longing. I want to know

if you are willing

to live, day by day, with the consequence of love

and the bitter

unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even

the gods speak of God.

There Is Ship, (1964) Peter, Paul, and Mary