Advice to Young Poets

Don’t be afraid of your dark thoughts

but don’t give them absolute power either.

Put those dark thoughts in a well-lit room close by

and listen to them from a place of authority and calm.

When they are hungry, give your dark thoughts food grown in clean soil

and water from the clearest streams

because dark thoughts are really just ideas that are afraid.

Treat your dark thoughts like children who need care to become healthy.

Guide them into your art and let the art speak those fears

And when your thoughts are ill, let your art be the medicine and the hospital bed.

You are the doctor and the nurse and the midwife and the priest to them.

Let your art heal those dark thoughts so that they can become

what they are meant to be in the wholeness of you

as an artist

and a friend

and a human

living and breathing and growing all the time.

Don’t be afraid of dark thoughts.