(I had intended to post this last month, but it got bumped in favor of talking about The BookCon – so, National Poetry Month continues for one more post.)

Part of the intent behind National Poetry Month (at least I think, it wasn’t my invention) is to encourage people to read more poetry.  There’s certainly a kind of mystique to poetry, and it can seem intimidating or out-of-reach to many an “average” reader.  But there’s another kind of poetry that every high school kid (and pretty much everyone else, too) seems to just “get” – I’m talking about song lyrics.  How many times have you listened to a song and felt that the singer was speaking directly to you?  I know it’s happened to me, more times than I can count, and not just when I was an angsty teenager.  Here are some song lyrics I love, and I think these absolutely qualify as poetry:

How long ’til my soul gets it right?
Can any human being ever reach that kind of light?
 I call on the resting soul of Galileo, king of night vision, king of insight.

~Indigo Girls, “Galileo”

When I was in high school, I used to exchange letters with H, a friend from camp who lived in another school district.  We would send each other long missives full of all the silliness two excessively bookish teenaged girls can dream up (although it didn’t seem silly at the time), exchange our hideously awful poetry (although it didn’t seem awful at the time) and punctuate our letters with song lyrics we loved (and still love to this day – at least I do, and I expect the same is probably true of H).  I favored the thought-provoking rock anthems of R.E.M. and opaque lines from Rusted Root.  H usually strayed toward the folksy, and especially Indigo Girls.  I loved them too, and I still listen to them often, and to this day, they remind me of H.  Especially “Galileo,” which was a song we both loved.

When I’m alone, when I’ve thrown off the weight of this crazy stone,
 When I’ve lost all care for the things I own, that’s when I miss you.
That’s when I miss you, you who are my home.
You who are my home.
Here is what I know now, brother.
Here is what I know now, sister, goes like this: in your love, my salvation lies.

~Alexi Murdoch, “Orange Sky”

I no longer assume that every song I like was written just for me, or that I understand what the lyrics are supposed to mean.  But for me, “Orange Sky” will always be about the love between siblings.  Whenever I hear it – which is all the time, because I usually have the CD on repeat in the car – I think of my brother.  And my sisters-in-law.  And my best friends, R and J, who are like family to me.  And all the history that I have with all of those people, who have seen me at my worst and love me anyway.  (And the same goes for them.)

How I lived a childhood in snow
And all my teens in tow, stuffed in a strata of clothes
Pale the winter days after dark
Wandering the gray Memorial Park, a fleeting beating of hearts

~The Decemberists, “January Hymn”

The Decemberists are a more recent love.  This lyric doesn’t hold any particular meaning for me at a given time of life, but I just love how gorgeously written it is.  Colin Meloy is a poet for sure.  I spent many an evening commute belting out the entirety of his “The King is Dead” album, which I think is masterful.

So watch your time
Time descends
Let it spill quietly
From your hands
Oh, and the time is at hand
When all things under the sky
Go free of time
Time is passing you by
Got no time

~Alexi Murdoch, “Blue Mind”

Sorry to push more Alexi Murdoch on you (yes, I really do love his music) but this is another lyric that is poetry to me, and particularly meaningful poetry.  I listened to this song, over and over again, when Peanut was in the NICU.  I felt as though her first weeks were being stolen from me, and “Blue Mind,” with its image of time slipping away like grains of sand, spoke to me.  I sang it quietly to her, and “Orange Sky” as well, during Kangaroo Care, and I think she recognized it from all the times I listened to “Time Without Consequence” when I was expecting.

Me, my thoughts are flower strewn
Ocean storm, bayberry moon
I have got to leave to find my way

~R.E.M., “Find the River”

Last one, but I couldn’t conclude a post with snippets of my favorite lyrics, without a nod to R.E.M.  (I have to be me.)  R.E.M. has been my favorite band since high school – recent loves for the Shins, the Decemberists, and Alexi Murdoch, among others, have not pushed Michael, Mike, Peter and Bill off their throne.  I love pretty much every R.E.M. song, but if pressed to name my favorite, I’d say “Find the River,” not just because it perfectly summed up the way I felt at seventeen, about getting my life underway already, but because I just love the words.

I could go on and on – and it does seem like so many favorites are missing – but this post has to end sometime.  Maybe there’s another post here, about the songs that have meant a lot to me at different times in my life – but that’s a story for a different day.

What songs are poetry to you?