This Is About Poetry

 

This is about poetry.

This is about prose.

This is not about equations

And this has never been about what’s only black and white.

This is about moments captured in cinnamon and cayenne.

 

This is about what is ancient.

This is about what is fresh.

This is not about what makes perfect sense

And this has never been about a tried & true formula.

This is about senses that settle around me

Soft as snow, acrid as the wood fire’s smoke.

 

This is about what washes over me.

This is about what washes through me.

This is not about what is academic 

And this has never been about what is expected.

 

 

Poetry bubbles from deep down, 

Struggles to push its way up  

Swings ‘round the hushed bend,  

Muddied brook, clearing creek, cascading river

Thundering as its water falls.

 

Poetry gazes like astronomers

Dancing stories overhead

Scattering the dark. 

 

Like paper kites of magenta and apricot, 

paper airplanes darting on tiny thermals,

Like pinpricks of stars, zesty as an orange,

Lightening slicing the sky,

A taste of alpenglow and crescent moon tingles my senses,

Wrapped in crumpled paper and neon ribbon.

 

Tomorrow I unwrap it

Again and again and again. 

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Featured images are courtesy of Clark Young and Aaron Burden, respectively, via Unsplash.