How to Love a Poet
Nothing is off limits when you love a poet
To love a poet is to have a love affair with all forms of life. They speak the languages of love, death, injustice. As well as the languages of dewdrops, meadows, busy streets, humility.
A poet can transpose a hummingbird’s flight into an ecstasy and are almost always in touch with everything. It’s tiring. To love a poet is to let them take catnaps.
Allow them to wear all their emotions. Let them go deep. Skimming the surface doesn’t work for them. They need to be a sea. They will most likely crave plenty of quiet, but you’ll be surprised at how they come alive with real people.
Poets love to play with their words. Let them. Let them watch the slightest flicker of sunlight settling over a back shed, a tiny pond, a building.
Nothing is off limits when a poet feels poetry.
Loving a poet is esoteric and can be frustrating too. They are iconic and perplexing creatures leaving a trail of visions as if breadcrumbs to trace themselves back to you.
Sometimes moody, sometimes teary for no apparent reason, but to them their world is constantly moving, alive, titillating. They are the twitch of the smallest rabbit, and the roar of a lion’s majesty. Puddles catch them off guard. Rain enhances everything. Evergreens are companions. The ocean calls to them regularly. They taste words before they are birthed.
When a poet is well loved, they won’t leave you because you are their moon, and sun and they will find poetry in your song.
They will create special words just for you and pour them into a cup, bring you plate of your favorite cookies arranged to the sound of your soul.
Poets make no sense and a lot of sense. They are walking, breathing their word snippets; jotted down and spoken aloud to an audience of dust particles raining in the air.
Poets murmur sweet nothings to the smallest creatures. Woodland critters seem to always be near.
A poet won’t eat a dessert they will become the dessert just as much as a sunset.
Twilight bewitches them. Flowers transcend inside of their dreams. They can hear starlight and may even start to sway a bit when the sky is clear, and the galaxies call them.
To love a poet hold them close when unseen ghosts appear, and footsteps of the past are near.
Poets are very much known to break out in song, dance with roasted garlic, befriend smallish animals and find children refreshing.
Their highly sensitive nature doesn’t take well to stern criticism because they have enough of their own.
It’s difficult to be a poet but it’s who they are.
To love a poet will make you unusually vulnerable. You will probably feel feels that you had no idea existed. You might start to notice the tune a leaf makes, or how a breeze is alive and how an espresso is more than a beverage but a whole damn beautiful sunrise.
In return a poet will give you respect, love and kindness. They will support you, cherish your quirks, nourish your dreams, and protect your solitude. They will see things that will unconditionally warm you.
Carolyn Riker, MA, LMHC, is a licensed psychotherapist and author of three books of poetry and prose. Her latest is My Dear, Love Hasn’t Forgotten You. If you’d like, follow her on Facebook at Carolyn Riker, MA, LMHC or Instagram.
