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Ruby M. Harmon
Journeying Through Poetry
I liken my passion for writing poetry to eating sweet ground pea soup, craving it, savoring the hidden wells of liquid lingering in bony crevices, until the taste melds within me.
I feel my poetry as deeply as a djembe’s beat, the echo, the call awakening pores, consonant with the rhythmic pulse of living.
I hear my poetry as melodically as raindrops tip-toeing across ruffled zinc roofs. I lose myself in the words landing multiplied on paper, carefree and purposefully.
I laugh at those moments when poetry for me is like an unwanted cure, like worm medicine or castor oil poured in tiny receptacles, swallowed; the taste unwanted but necessary. Lingering.
My passion for poetry meanders, dictates, creates and discovers, like fingers joyfully tumbling over piano keys. Pleasantly it embraces, even surprises.
Poetry resonates with my soul, becomes germane to my essence and transports me even with eyes open. Imagine awakening at 3 am with verses, lyrics, dancing from your lips, but the words seem so unrelated to your current experience. This was how my passion for poetry evolved in 2003.
I had written four or five poems in the late 80s to early 90s, and later found those poems folded in an underdeveloped journal that had been packed and unpacked, but never re-read. And so, I embraced this new feeling curiously. For months after this early morning awakening, I found myself engrossed in writing.
The poems would unfold in spite of me. They were meant to be private, until I shared one or two. I’d never been trained to write poetry and have toyed with the idea of pursuing a Masters in Creative Writing. Writing leaves the writer vulnerable and open to critique. The piece becomes a tangible entity once applied to paper. The work becomes exposed, accepted or rejected.
Poetry, like any art form, isn’t stagnant. So the writer must evolve with the art and improve on the art through courses, mentoring, examining, editing, often ripping it apart and altering it. I have been fortunate to have very supportive family members and friends who have encouraged and pushed me.
Do I define myself as a physician or poet? Poetry is a newly discovered passion and medicine one of my loves. To become a physician, one has to love medicine and embrace the pursuit of medicine and healing, with all its joys, stresses and frustrations. As a physician, I am cognizant of the art of knowing and not knowing, of doing and sometimes not achieving. I am also aware that the art of doctoring requires constant molding, reshaping, augmenting and reconstructing. How analogous this is to writing!
Situations are often unpredictable. The inertia that temporarily halts the creative and thinking processes occurs in medicine and writing. There are days when I awaken with several poems leaping onto the page and other times when the concept of a poem lingers; the words, stuck, unreachable; there are times when the diagnosis and cure in medicine are blatantly obvious and moments when they’re downright elusive.
My poetry explores the real world. It happens. The impulse to write just happens out of my experiences and encounters. Often, I begin with thoughts and soon the ideas become totally transmuted to something unrelated. Or sometimes, the moment isn’t right and nothing happens.
I look back on my poetic journey, which was intended to be private, and see its public metamorphosis. I am thankful and proud. My first volume of poetry, Poetic Moves While Doctoring, is due out in October 2006 and should be available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and directly from Jay Street Publishers. The poems date back to 2003, when I first began exploring and accepting the joys and challenges that come with writing. I am learning, revising and enjoying this newfound love. The journey continues . . .
Copyright © Ruby M. Harmon
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