Be joyful in your silence

Ben Okri, To An English Friend in Africa

Whenever I feel lost or hopeless, poetry comes to me with the right suggestion, the perfect advice to touch things as if it was for the first time. Silence can be joy, as loneliness can. I’m sure of it. Despite social distancing and lockdowns looming over beauty and connectedness, words no longer flowing perpetually the way they were supposed to, still we can learn how to feel them step back into us, their unexpected wonder embracing all we thought might be gone forever.

For more than a year I barred my way to this space, my thoughts moving in the quicksilver landscape of self, my energy joining silence in a luminous, but solitary way. No need to come here and leave my alphabet trail behind. Yet now, thanks to a Zoom session with other poetry lovers, l feel words discovering you through me. I feel joy in silence, and silence in joy. Maybe a blog truly is a shared silence blooming its way into the other, or maybe is just an offering, a portion of our truth resonating in other people’s truths, who knows. Yet here I am again, shedding skin for you, with you, Ben Okri’s invitation shining like a summoning, or a “rich road” made of flowers and spells.