I GIVE YOU MY THOUGHTS. I GIVE YOU MY WORDS. I GIVE YOU MY VOICE.
Thoughts are always in the form of words. I can hear them in my mind, enunciate them. You too can hear them. But it is how they are said that matters. There’s a difference between giving you my thoughts in the form of words enunciated –there is more to speaking than what is written. A word can be pronounced in many ways. It is the inflection. It is the pauses. It is the tone. Reflecting love, anger, hope. How often have I listened to a poem read by the author only to feel that I could do a much better job. Writing is a gift. Reading is also a gift. Infusing feeling into someone else’s words. Words that may have been written centuries ago, but the feeling must come through and must now be transmitted to someone never imagined by the original writer. And that is what I, or whoever reads the poem, or someone else’s thought, must do.
Farewell to my past
I wander through the rooms
as if I were a ghost
choosing this and that.
What to take, what to leave,
what I will need, what holds meaning
but to me alone
and not to those who follow.
A book – read yesterday,
to read perhaps tomorrow.
A book – the small child kept throughout the years
and that I am loath to part with.
A book by an unforgotten love.
How difficult to live in the now
knowing that tomorrow none of this will matter.
Perhaps I can store what I hold dear
in the closet of forgotten things,
hoping that someone,
sometime,
will open the cupboard
and remember.
The cat
Six a.m.
Thump on the bed.
Over to the windowsill.
The cat sits herself down
and looks outside.
Motionless.
She stares out through the window.
I raise my head and look out too
but nothing moves.
Except the slowly changing light
announcing day.
The leaves hang motionless
in the faint light of dawn.
The cat sits
and stares.
Time passes.
The air is full of birdsong.
She must see something
or perhaps is simply waiting
for something to move.
I’ll never know what it is
she’s looking at.
No, I’ll never know.
The light gets stronger.
Then I’m the one who moves.
I throw aside the covers.
And the cat,
the cat jumps down,
ready for her
breakfast.
Shakespeare
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Thomas Wyatt
Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array, after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small,
Therewithal sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”
Erika Bizzarri 
Erika – as usual, another gorgeous gift from you: in thoughts and words. With great love and respect. Merry Christmas! — David
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Erika
Wonderful —you bring words to life—yours seem to fill the world within with what we are saying silently to ourselves…beautiful meditations…thank you!
J Seattle
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You read beautifully Erika, with clarity and expression; it’s because you take pains to understand the text of course. I still have your recordings of some of my own poems – beautifully read, as ever.
When my poem Conversation with a Sea Lion was read aloud in New Zealand, and I was unable to be present, it was spoken by a New Zealand tv actor and he, too, brought it to life (my Kiwi daughters sent me a recording).
It’s odd that so many poets are terrible at delivering their own work. Obviously they understand the text! They simply don’t consider the needs of their listeners. Plus sometimes they have a strange belief that the poem should be chanted monotonously to emphasise the sound more than the meaning. Crazy.
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