Day 77 - Poetry in Your Pocket

I had a different book in mind for today. I was going to make another pretty leather journal (which is almost like taking a day off now, since I've made so many of them). But my friend Rachel kindly mentioned that, as part of National Poetry Month, today was Poetry in Your Pocket Day. So clearly, I had to do something with poetry, small enough to slip into a pocket.

And so today's book is a lot more about content than structure. I chose the simple one-page folded structure because it fit the content so well. I considered a few different poems and poets--Pablo Neruda, Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Barrett Browning--but finally decided on an all-time favorite, the 13th-century Persian Sufi mystic poet, Rumi. After reading through more than a dozen of his poems, I chose an old favorite, one that particularly seems to speak to me at this point in my life.

I laid the short poem out in PageMaker publishing program with a beautiful sunrise background and printed it onto the white side of a sheet of printed decorative paper, folded it, cut it and folded it again, gluing the two folded over center pages together. Then I added a front page image.

This is the poem that is printed on the pages:

It is your turn now.
You waited, you were patient.
The time has come
for Us to polish you.
We will transform your inner pearl
into a house of fire.
You're a gold mine.
Did you know that,
hidden in the dirt of the earth?
It is your turn now
to be placed in fire.
Let Us create your impurities.

Making this book was pure Joy.