Poetry as the way forward?

I had a really great conversation with my vocational coach today. We talked about poetry. Which might be surprising, poetry in vocational coaching, but it made a lot of sense to me. He went to a seminar on poetry as medicine. And spoke glowingly of how some people in the seminar visibly changed (in a good way) after they had written and shared a couple poems with the group. He thinks poetry is one of the best ways to make one's way forward.

Metaphor and poetry help me access my thoughts and feelings and communicate in a way that I wouldn't normally. Poetry makes point in a different way. In my own life poetry both reading it and writing it have shifted my thoughts and feelings around and often made them clearer.

I need to be reading and writing more poetry. I almost feel thirsty for the way they it helps me think. And I haven't written any in a long while. I know I am not the best poet but I know enough to say "I get it" when my coach says that sometimes poetry can be the way forward. There have been two poems I wrote in the last year (both posted on this blog) which changed me. Something about the writing of them shifted something so that in the end I made new decisions because of what they birthed in me.

So I leave you with a poem I ran across online. :) enjoy. And I leave myself with a renewed poetic momentum.

won't you celebrate with me

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
--Lucille Clifton