"The job of poetry is to give a better reputation to language" — Scott Zwiren, Bridge Poet

Contributed by: Patricia Thackray - Director of The Bridge Poetry Program

April is National Poetry Month. The work presented here by The Bridge Poets is both a celebration of National Poetry Month, and an apostrophe to the ever changing, evolving moon. Most often, writing is a solitary process. This exercise affords us the opportunity to find common ground and discover things we might not discover when writing on our own.

As we enter 2013, many people contemplate the year past, and the new year ahead. The Bridge Poetry Program provides clients with the ability to express themselves in a totally unique way through an art medium. Here is a poem that expresses the kind of introspection that seems particularly relevant as a new year starts. Enjoy!

Life

By: Gerald Borenstein

How did I get to this or that point?
Or is trying to reconcile either
somehow pointless?
Maybe you spat out
the truth of your life
long ago and can't retrieve it,
can't recognize it from
a hole in the ground.

Am I living in the mainstream?
Absolutely not!
Too much current
to contend with
too much content
too many dead bodies
beneath the surface.

The Bridge Poetry Program provides clients with the ability to express themselves in a totally unique way through an art medium. Most of the poets/clients have never done any creative writing prior to this program. A group collaborative poem, with contributions from all the different Bridge Poets to create one single work, is a great tool that focuses creativity on a specific topic.

Patricia Thackray, Director of the Bridge Poetry Workshops, said, "The poem is a container for feelings that can otherwise be inexpressible and it is the safety of the poetic form that allows them to express their feelings, which is therapeutic for people with mental illness." Each client wrote several lines of poetry collaboratively, the result is below:

RENEWAL
Delirious vision:
Enormous moon, blood-red sky—
In the deep forest,

A languid woman lathers herself in sweet
White-water mist, lustrous hair streaming—
Blacker than night.

Our swimming goddess of beauty:
We worship and dream of you: Aphrodite
In all of us— put to countless tests during our era.

Sun rise upon us!
Raw, hot diamond power.
We swim from Him—

Pursue You through the day.
Beckoning contention,
Driving off defeat.

Never seeing the beasts,
Staring them down—
To lust and drown in your radiant person.

A love more powerful and prodigious
Than all man-made riches.
O Goddess: protector,

Moving everything dead
To life once again—
Sweet spring!

— Michael Adams, Erin Austin, Karen Avilez, Gerald Borenstein, Hilary Cohen, Charlene Donnelly, William Fleming, Alicia Pacheco, Linda Ponticello, Theresa O'Sullivan