A lovely musing that. Rick Benjamin, a poet and lecturer at the institute of Contemplative Studies based at Brown University in the US, suggests that it doesn't matter what the poem is as long as it's a poem you love. He exudes: "Something extraordinary happens when you hold a poem in your own body, your own mind. It's a transfer of one thinker to another."

Is this just an intellectual, mind-stretching exercise then or can it benefit our emotional and mental health? Absolutely it can!

Take a few minutes to meditate on a poem at a ponderous pace and it can distill all the excess chatter of our mind. Read it out loud. Let the assonance, the music, the rise and fall of the poem seep through you like water through ground coffee beans. Don't feel intimidated if you are not entirely sure of it's meaning. Read it again. Slowly. Really feel it.

It can be difficult to find ways of quietening the mind; calming the heart. Could holding a poem inside you body be such a way?

I'd love to expand on this theme but maybe if I waffle less you'll go peruse a poem.