The question being, where do poems come from?
I often find them in a field that exists here in our world with its grains of sand, its cups of steaming tea, but also in a place well beyond us. A place that is invisible, ineffable, numinous.
Poems come from the land itself, the original book written in its syllabary of image, elements, light, shadow. A field where we can wander freely and gather what is given. Where we can search for what lies beyond what is given. What has no words, yet.
Or perhaps poems come from a long river upon which we travel in small boats, dropping lines to varying depths, never knowing what we’ll catch.
Do poems come from a place, or are they born of attention? Are they a way of being present? Of seeing? Or are they a way of hearing? Of calling out?
Jungians say each of us has a Dream Maker. I think we also have a Poem Maker—a self that knows how to see, how to listen, that walks that “field” out yonder and fills baskets to the brim.
One answer I can give to what the Far Country is, is that it is the place where the poem maker lives. The Poem Country. Where the field is an open page, and the empty basket waits.
See you there.
::
Also: I could see you on Zoom! You are invited to Terrain.org’s Earth Day Reading Monday April 28 at 6pm Mountain time. I will be joining poets Mark Irwin and Chaun Ballard for a reading and Q&A.
Kyce Bello 
I love this question of where does a poem come from. I sit here pondering your questions:
“Do poems come from a place, or are they born of attention? Are they a way of being present? Of seeing? Or are they a way of hearing? Of calling out?”
I think these are all true, and especially true in certain moments and in certain poems. Sometimes I feel a poem is more about listening; sometimes it is more of a calling out– an attempt to make a slender bridge to the beloved, to create intimacy out of anonymity. Or, could it even be– to simply remember and proclaim the intimacy we are ever wrapped within?
I like your suggestion of the Far Country as Poem Country… Wherever poems come from, it certainly bears an element of the mystery, the place where soul is found or made!