“Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves
we make poetry.”                                                              -William Butler Yeats

When I heard this quote this morning my soul responded with a resounding:

YES

YES YES YES!

Bring it on!

YES!

The poetry of who we are in our hearts gets cooked down into a sweet sauce,
a coulis of sweetness
by the process of quarreling with ourselves, or arguing in our journals
the tug and push of the bickering in our own minds

THIS

This is the process in us which distills
the many flavors of our thoughts
into the one unique potion of our essence
and our poetry:
the scent of a thousand roses
and jasmine and cedar,
the deep salty fruit of our budding soul,
the essence of who we are
can emerge only after we have wrestled with our own minds

THESE are the dragons
in all of the fairy tales

YES

These are the monsters and the myths

And when we have seen in the mirror
and named them, then the words come

and the calm
of knowing
the simple truth:

It is us then, not some other
who will save the day.

It is our courage
and our decision to choose love
to choose the way of peace

And then there’s not only the poetic words,
but the music
and the fragrance of supper cooking in the kitchen
where our hearts are welcomed home again.

Yes.