🪶 I Dare You to Read a Poem at Work

This one's called "Purple"

Well, hello there, Diving Board readers! 🌊The Plunge will return next week. I’m working on a not-at-all-depressing essay for you about loneliness and remote work. Don’t worry, I promise not to be an Eeyore. But I also promise not to be a Tigger, bouncing obnoxiously around the forest spreading toxic positivity.

No, in that essay, I will be a Pooh: heartfelt, a little funny, and yes, a touch sad.

But I’m really happy right this minute, because I just realized I get to tell my kids that at work today, I used the sentence, “I will be a poo”. 💩 They’ll be thrilled by this.

For today, I’m taking a risk. Today, I’m giving you….poetry.

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I’m guessing that a sizable number of you are not poetry readers. Honestly, I wasn’t either, until a few years ago. I generally found poetry confusing or cheesy or boring or all of the above.

Poetry was too slow, it needed to hurry up! Or it needed to stop being so damn esoteric. Or to stop rhyming, or to rhyme more - I couldn’t make up my mind, as both options seemed equally annoying in different ways.

But then I started writing poetry. I just gave it a try. And I really, really loved the experience. And writing poetry made me want to read it, so that I could not be labeled an egocentric poet, waving my feather pen while explaining, “Oh, I don’t really like poetry. Except my poetry. My poetry is the only good poetry. Here, read my poetry.”

So I read John O’Donahue and David Whyte and Mary Oliver and Rumi and Ada Limón, and I fell in love.

Image Source: Alena Koval on Pexels

But here’s the trick to reading poetry. Like fine wine, poetry tastes best when it goes down slowly. It requires a different way of reading than a book or an article or a (ahem) newsletter calls for. This is why sharing my poetry with you in this format feels risky - because if you just skim it quickly and move on, like you do with most emails, it probably won’t do much for you.

Want to give it a try? Here’s what I suggest:

1. Take one slow, deep breath right now, following it all the way in and out.

2. Notice where you’re holding tension and see if you can release it (I just realized I was gritting my teeth, per usual).

3. Slowly read - don’t skim - the following poem. Take in each word. Don’t try to interpret it, just let it wash over you, like a feeling or an experience.

Purple

You should leave your house
and just drive,
taking every left turn
you can
for 10
or 15 minutes
and then stop
wherever you are
and see where destiny
has carried you.
And then 
you should
get out of your car
and wander around
until you find
something purple
and then notice
what blue and red
can create together.
You should 
pray or sing
something improvised
to God and the angels,
something about
driving and destiny
and the offspring
of primary colors.
You should lose track 
of time,
and when you realize 
you’ve lost it,
don’t send out a search party.
Just let it go 
on its own adventure,
guided by nonsense
and sighting secondary colors.
Isn’t it fun to imagine 
what Time might do 
if you went your 
separate ways 
for a while?
I wonder 
what sort of song
would be born into the world 
as it wandered
without aim,
just marveling
at divinity anywhere
it wound up.

Before you move on, just pause for another breath or so…….and that’s that.

If you hated the last 90 seconds, you’re a great sport, and I appreciate you.

If you liked it at least a little, consider grabbing a copy of The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, by David Whyte. Whyte has been called a “corporate poet”, and I am jealous because I wanted that moniker for myself. I’ll have to get my feather pen back out and try to come up with something equally clever.

The point, my friends, is that we bring our spirits everywhere we go, including to work. And our spirits need to be fed. Yet so often we compartmentalize the feeding of our spirits into windows of time and place that are separate from the times and places where we actually do the living of our lives.

I’m convinced that poetry, more than any other form of writing, is food for the spirit. And so, if you find that poetry stirs you, centers you, connects you to meaning, why not read a poem at your desk? Why not take a five minute poetry break when you hit the 2:00 p.m. slump? Why not allow “corporate poet” to be a job description?

Tell us in the comments: Are you a poetry reader, and if so, what poets do you love? Are you a poetry skeptic or novice? What did this post bring up for you?

Thanks for giving this little experiment a try today. I’ll see you next week on The Diving Board!