In this poem, no one has died.
Okay, okay, maybe someone did,
but only for a line or two and then
they come back, maybe in a dream,
hazy in the blue-gray morning
looking like their picture on the mantel,
silently taking the hand
of the one they love and descending
a spiral staircase that must have
some great significance in dreams
or poems and then everything
is beautiful again – cut to the line
of life philosophy. This poem
does not contain any anthropomorphizing
of the natural elements, such as wind
bullying the trees with its lashing arms, besides,
the word anthropomorphizing does nothing
for the rhythm of a poem. Any relationship
of this poem with poem s about poetry –
those self-conscious meta-form missals
that show up when the poet runs out
of other topics, is pure coincidence. In addition,
this poem would never try to throw
off its reader for
example by enjambing lines
of birds headed southward, fleeing
in noisy protest, the sky a theatre
of exodus. Here, in this poem,
there will be only passing reference to metaphors
while they cling, beggar children hanging
from your clothes as you rise to go toward
the more productive parts of your day.
When this poem grows up, it wants to be a limerick,
as in, there once was a lass who liked poetry,
a love more complex than it ought to be,
when it didn’t go well, it was easy to tell,
words tumbled, dissolving in entropy.
Nov 25, 2013
One of 30 poems in 30 days