POEMS BY JANE ROBERTS

(Jane hadn’t shown me any of these poems as she wrote them over a period of some four and a half years. She didn’t keep them from me deliberately. In one way they’re like casual jottings that she left half finished and unseen in her journals, until I found them when I began searching for fresh material for the frontmatter of this Volume 2 of Dreams. In another way they contain deep and private insights, ranging from her free, marveling childhood yearning and intuitive knowing up to her present physically impaired condition—her arthritic-like “symptoms,” as we call them—and beyond to the final state of her work after her death. I found each poem to be a revelation, stirring sad and questioning wells of emotion. I can’t help but mourn as I write this piece; I tell myself that had I seen the poems as Jane produced them I might have learned a little more about her each time; I might have been able to help her more than I had over the years. At the same time, it’s as though she’s just finished the poems, so fresh and consistent do they seem to me. And as I reread them I understand once again that my wife is still teaching me about her courage, and about the ineffable, unending mystery of the universe that each one of us is creating moment by moment, separately and all together.

I offer each one of these poems with a brief commentary. The spelling and punctuation are always Jane’s own. The third poem is the only one she formally titled.

In this deceptively simple but moving poem about her magical childhood responses to the world she lived in, Jane foreshadows from that viewpoint the innate knowledge she was to express a quarter of a century later in the Seth material. When she actually wrote the poem, she’d had her physical symptoms for some nine years; for her own creative and challenging reasons she had allowed them to gain a deep hold upon her, and I think that she drew her inspiration for this poem from that context.)

(I hadn’t realized four years ago that Jane was speculating about leaving physical reality. Had I known, I would have been bewildered—at least at first. She was 47; I was 10 years older. As Jane wrote then about drawing strength from me by touching my arm, in April 1980 she touched my heart when I found this poem:)

(“With all of her mental and physical challenges, my wife could still write a poem of humble thanks to the earth. Amazing!” Such was my first thought when I found this poem. Jane loved physical life with a deep, intuitive and psychic innocence then—and she still does. I don’t see how she can express that earthly love more clearly, simply, and beautifully than she does here. Yet, to me this poem also contains many other layers of meaning:)

(In this poem, which she wrote just a year ago, Jane deals not only with her transformation of her work into its inevitable literary, physical form, but restates her belief that her individualized consciousness will live after her physical death. Yet, just as it had been in the first poem in this series, her death was still on her mind some four and a half years later. I see now that given the lifetime challenges she’s chosen, such thoughts will continue to play a prominent role in the reality Jane is creating for herself:)