Poetry

Over my shoulder they ask me

what I’m writing. “Poetry”,

I say and they all begin to laugh

as their minds crawl back

to earliest childhood rhymes and

forced high school reading.

They ask if it can get you girls

and I answer “No, not really.”

Then they wonder why I bother

not seeing the poetry all around

us that I write to preserve that the

moment may not be lost forever.

Hoping that late at night they

might take this book far from

prying eyes as secretly as

sexual shame or forbidden desires

and come close to something

like understanding.

That they may see some

distant notion of poetry

when fixing their car, how

the pistons in the engine

pump the life blood as if

the machine lay breathing.

Or when grabbing their

freshly poured pint might

notice the bubbles rising to

the surface like a childhood

memory of turning over

shells on the ocean floor.

How their eyes could fixate

in the moment of watching

their child receive her first haircut,

anticipating the blonde locks

falling to the tile like

the sheering of a sheep.

Or upon seeing the shattered

glass of a broken bottle poured

across a sidewalk their mind

may drift to scattered diamonds

or the very stars adrift

against a concrete sky.

Finding no shame in watching

their son dance in a play rather than

running on a football field

but taking pride in the realization

that the two are so intertwined they

carry with them the same movements.

Maybe they will write things

that no one will ever read

or make mention of something

once seen that struck them

as being so beautiful that

they couldn’t bear to let it pass.