A Poem Is                   Sunday, January 26, 2003

I know what a poem is…

A poem is nothing and everything,

But how did you know I might write

Those lines?  Ah, but they seemed canned

Trite, a line from a bad novel, a bad book,

did they not?

A poem is and that is all it is.

Like Jesus is and so am I.

A poem is like the little things around

The house, significant to some

Junk to others

Nothing to yet others who cannot see

A poem from a pea.

A poem is like the words of the songbird

No words at all, no beauty, no rhyme

Though sometimes yes, a rhyme and

Sometimes yes, words…

words and rhyme.

A poem is like an old, worn friend,

Often thought of and sometimes missed

But never good company

Because you’ve said all there is to say

And, finally, you  know all there is to know.

Yet sometimes a poem is like that one dear old friend,

Someone quite different, someone whom you

Cannot get out of your head, someone with whom

You might speak, endlessly through the night and

Into the early morning, laughing.

A poem is, to us, that which we want it to be.

Sometimes something, sometimes nothing…

A poem is known by anyone who reads it,

And never by those who don’t.

Yet no one really knows exactly

What a poem is, but me.