We Are the Same

Not long ago I had conversations with two different poet friends, both about the connective power of the written word.

Shari Wagner said she sees her poems as vehicles for connecting human to nature, living to dead, young to old. Here’s a lovely example of this, her poem about young Orville and Will Wright, and their dream of flight.

Later that same day, Shannon Siegel spoke of writing as a way of “feeling with” someone, as in a Buddhist meditation. She had read a book called The Golden Theme by Brian McDonald. McDonald asserts that the writer’s essential task is to show our commonalities.

By Mike DelGaudio, via Wikimedia Commons

Shannon sent me this passage from the book:

“Stories are the collective wisdom of everyone who has ever lived. Your job as a storyteller is not simply to entertain…Your job is to let people know that everyone shares their feelings—and that these feelings bind us. Your job is a healing art, and like all healers, you have a responsibility.

Let people know that they are not alone. You must make people understand that we are all the same.”

In a time when our focus is constantly nudged toward what divides us, it is a tonic to understand that yes, everyone on earth has experienced every single emotion that has ever swept through us.

By Kahuroa at en.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons

Here’s Shannon’s poem, stretched out to you. Do you feel it?

oceans within

Sounds of water…sounds of water…sounds of water…
The Long Way, Moitessier

Memories lock selves
in place, deep within
the cells, those
inner chambers.
Recall rises up
like magic, aroused,
liberated in an instant,
a rush, an echo,
a ripple through time,
a feeling, just a feeling,
something I felt once,
something I felt before,
I feel again, I now feel again.
A swell crashes the shore,
then recedes. Waves
ebb, then flow, an ocean
of promise and possibility
rushing through my veins, life
unfolds with a touch,
a whisper perhaps, a word
spoken, a gaze, a persistent
recurrence of what was,
is now is, again, somehow.
Deflecting logic, defying reason,
this heart sings a joyous
song, thrums love’s lyric,
hums a tender entreaty:
Come with me. This
way. Look for me.
Find me.