National Poetry Day 2021 occurred on the 7th of October. This annual celebration of poetry has been happening since 1994. According to the National Poetry Day’s own website, this is a day “all about enjoying, discovering and sharing poems.” In 2021, the theme was Choice.

The following words were inspired by a previous theme a couple of years ago.

Truth

Truth I touch, smell, see myself,
It’s not the words of someone else;
So if I trust from being told,
That is not truth; that’s faith I hold.

Yet sometimes when I look I find
That what I see is my own mind;
So where is truth if my own eyes
Are not immune from my own lies?

Truth is hopes and truth is fears,
Not always as it first appears,
Not always as you might expect,
But always worthy of respect.

There’s honest joy and honest grief,
There’s knowledge and there’s blind belief.
And when we worship what is true
Is that just someone’s point of view?

It saves, it kills, it lives and sleeps,
Truth’s blossom grows, it sows and reaps,
And truth is noble, truth is just,
And yet can turn belief to dust.

And if the choice should come that I
Might lose all faith, or let truth lie,
Would grabbing truth and honesty
Be worth my loss of trust in me?

Truth is doubt; doubt’s grip is tight
Around the things you thought were right;
It clings like ivy, creeps like rot,
‘Til what your heart felt true is not.

Truth pours like a river, trickles like a stream,
It is a nightmare, it is a dream;
Truth stands alone, is not my will,
It shouts, it hides, it is not still.

Is truth a fact without dispute,
Or faith unproved but resolute?
So like a path in fresh-laid snow
Truth is truly hard to know.