poem

 Poem #49

Poetry is a pointing toward something both inarticulable and fleeting. Yes there are words, which is beside the point, but it’s the best we can do. The actual words for describing it are unknown. All we can do is gesture. Prose, to its credit, also involves pointing. But we also learn about the finger. Why it’s crooked. Who it belongs to. How they arrived here. Where they came from. What they’ve been looking for. Why they feel the need to point at all. It gets deeper and more ornate.  The backstory behind these particular high heeled shoes. How he made his fortune and then lost it all. A love story about a girl who fell for a boy who thought love was just a poem. A murder mystery. Social satire. What happens to some readers is they get too wrapped up in the who, the what, the why. They forget to look. After a while all stories start to sound the same. Archetypes abound. The one about the dead mother. The one with the son who hates his father. They think to themselves, I’m bored with this book. They pick up a poem and stare 

9/24/23