This week’s poem is about nothing less than the soul. That’s a pretty vast and complex subject, and yet Michael Tarabilda’s “Seek the Soul” speaks in breathtakingly simple words. I love this poem’s musical sounds and cadences, how bluntly and yet how tenderly it shares its guidance, and the exquisite plainness with which it tells of something so often elusive and ineffable.
Michael Tarabilda has been flirting with the muse for nearly 50 years. Several of his poems have been published in American and English collections.
Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are still open. A link to submit appears below.
Seek the Soul
By Michael Tarabilda
Seek the soul
in the stone,
not in your own
hard heart.
The broken statue
valued by the sands
will never be found,
except by the truly lost.
Collapse. Be soft.
Slip through the circle.
Shout to be outside
yourself.
Only you will know
what cannot be known.
Only you.
Megan Grumbling is a poet who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Seek the Soul” copyright © 2019 by Michael Tarabilda appears by permission of the author. Submissions to the Deep Water column are open through the end of October. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/programs/deep-water.
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