In celebration of National Poetry Month, I am inviting several poet friends to join me in my daily endeavor of paying poetic attention to the world. This week I am sharing the practice with my dear friend Maya Stein, poet of The Creativity Caravan. Maya is one of the most generous writers/teachers/humans I know. Follow her on Instagram at @mayastein, and check out her #100day project for daily doses of wit and inspiration.

like chalk, i only want
to say what must be said.
give myself so wholly to the saying
that i leave behind
the earnest traces of my work
until at last i disappear,
utterly spent
in singing the holy.

photo and poem by katherine ferrier ©2017

I hope there is always room
to break the rules,
space to cleave from the
pattern, a breath of disorder.
I hope we will remember
certainty and sameness cannot destroy
the fault line below, and when
it comes, it will be a necessary
cracking, a sudden and
insistent birth.
There is the map we hold
in our hands and the one
we carry in our bones.

photo and poem by Maya Stein ©2017