This episode is a part of Mark’s “A Journey Through Poetry” – a personal reflection of his life as a poet, a writer, and a author – in which he recites a different poem from every one of his poetry collections. In this episode Mark recites his poem ‘The Embodiment of Poetry’, from his poetry collection The Pathfinder, and he gives some insight and some context into why he was inspired to write this poem in particular.
embodiment
The Pathfinder: The Embodiment of Poetry
My Poem “The Embodiment of Poetry”
I walked into the woods today... I returned to a place that I know well and a place that knows me... I saw the same trees that I have known for over a decade, and as soon as I entered the place where the poet in me was born I saw echoes of myself from the past - and I felt as if, once again, I was seeing a version of myself who had yet to have suffered the scars and the losses that I had. I have always felt blessed with inspiration whenever I go back to where things began for me - the place that I have a memory of which is so clear and special, the place where I only remember feeling an abundance of happiness, the place that I consider a fountain of poetry, that I have been back to many times over the years; however, today, this time, from the moment that I reentered the oasis of life that over time has become the endless kaleidoscope of memories, experiences, and thoughts from the moment that I saw it, I felt as if I were returning truly changed and different from who I was when I first visited. I felt it almost immediately: I was not the same person as I was, and yet I was still the same poet who I have always been - but now filled with the things of mine taken from the shadows of the monuments that define my life... I felt like I was one of the trees, and I felt as if they were as close to me as family... I felt like I had been waiting for something which was always there - but, before today, I could not perceive what had always been all around me and right in front of me. I had been away from this place for a long time - but as soon as I was once again surrounded by the storytellers of nature itself, it did not take me long to complete the puzzle within me, by using the pieces I had left behind from the last time I was there, to realise that I am, and I have always been, what I always wanted to be: the embodiment of poetry.
A Poem A Day #175: Embodiment
My Poem ‘Corvus’
As black as the night-sky,
as intelligent as a mathematician,
as symbolic of life and death
as any bird that you will seeing flying in the sky,
the Crow is a bird that has always
gripped me with intrigue, awe, and fascination.
Crows have always been close by
when something life-changing and important
was just about to rise on the horizon;
there have been legends written and told
that tell of crows being messengers of life and the afterlife;
crows have featured in many supernatural stories
that walk a line of magic,
and tell tales of emissaries of hell and heaven;
if there we ever a bird that I would imagine
to be the perfect embodiment of night existing during the day,
it would have to be the crow, in every way –
even their black, pearl-like, eyes
are enough to elicit a shiver and a fright.
I often hear the caw of a crow;
I see a murder of crows almost every day;
I live very near to a forest of trees
in which crows roost and have a nest
on almost every branch of every tree,
and they have been there for longer than I know;
I have come face to face with a crow more than once,
and on more than one occasion it seemed to me
as if there was more to their fascination with me than I could ever say.
Crows are carriers of information;
crows are renowned in mythology as omens of gods and goddesses,
as tricksters, as reincarnated spirits,
who have unparalleled direction.
I believe there is more truth in a crows symbolism and significance
than legend or mythology could ever tell us.
In my bedroom, I have the most life-like
figure of a crow you will ever see,
and for some reason the sight of them
always gives me pause and focus;
and the name that I have given the crow perched on my bookshelf,
next to my Stephen King books,
is the same name as its genus –
the one and only ‘Corvus’.
Mark The Poet 