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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