/ Flash /
"Why do you have so many pill bottles in your baggage? Do you need these in your carry on?" Well yes of course I quietly think before seeing the large sign over his shoulder that states harassing airport security officers could land me in jail. The Security Officer's serious dark eyes are staring down at me waiting for an explanation. "Poetry, the pills contain poems," I answer to his indiscernible demeanor. Does poetry imply danger? Does a poem that hits your heart like a bomb threaten anyone? Weary I tell myself, don’t over explain. Keep it simple or you’ll be here all day. "A gimmick to sell poems" I offer, afraid to reach across the partition to show the short poems hidden in pill capsules. Pills of Poetry seems an incomprehensible explanation. "Aren't all the great poets from the British Isles," I suggest to spark his national pride. Perhaps Keats can mend a broken heart or Stevie Smith can satisfy a thirst for life's meaning. "A poem exists for every affliction of the heart," my last feeble attempt for my bag’s release.
Imagining the Security Officer handcuffing me for transporting bottled poems my future cellmate will ask, "what’s your crime?" Poetry. Perhaps I can ask for a prisoner exchange, one poetry lover for a drug dealer. "But WHY do you need to carry on ALL these pills?" the officer insists with a steely gaze. With all the feigned confidence I can summon, "I really may need them as my flight is very very long." He determines my need is medical as my ransacked bag is handed back across the partition.
The Poetry Pharmacy located on London’s Oxford street dispenses bottled poems for all your emotional ailments. My short visit to London presented an opportunity to embrace my love of poetry and explore The Pharmacy. Could I mend my sorrowful heart and damaged soul with a poem? Rows of labeled bottles filled with short poems in pill capsules lined the back wall. The bottle labels read like an alchemist’s apothecary: Dithering, Sense of Belonging, Pride and Wild Remedy were a few that caught my attention. In my deepest despair poet Jane Hirshfield soothed my sadness with a perfect phrase "Hold, one day more, what is asked." Is that phrase encapsulated in Sense of Belonging or Dithering? With blind love I fell under the magic of Margaret Atwood's phrase "I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment." Could it be found in a bottle of Wild Remedy? Can a poem give solace on the days when ache hears itself in the wind? Yes and there is a bottle at The Poetry Pharmacy waiting for discovery.
Rising in the early morning for the last leg of my journey, I hop on the Heathrow Express to catch my plane. Finally released from Security I arrive at my boarding gate and plop on a hard plastic chair. I unzip my bag, grab my dangerous bottle of Dithering carefully re-packed into a pair of socks for safe traveling. Discreetly opening my hazardous vial I unroll a pill that reads, "you pick out / your own song from the uproar / line by line, / and at last / throw back your head and sing it. Denise Levertov"