From Deda:

Reading a Poem

I commit to read a poem.
I stop everything else. I sit down. I read.
I taste each word in each line.
I take in, know the feelings.
I come to the end. I consider the whole.
I study the poet's name, the blurb.
(He died young. He grew up in Brooklyn.)
Finally I declare that I am done. I will not read the next one.
Otherwise
I would sit there with the pages forever,
Turning, reading, rereading, tasting, drinking.
But no. I stand, set down the pages, and walk, purposefully.
I look, act in command. But my head is blowing up.
I have opened up a box, and things are flying out.
Words fly around my head like Harpies.
They scream and swoop and laugh and cry.
Sometimes they fly together into phrases, lines.
"Pine!" yells one. "Spruce!" yells the next,
and they cackle and swirl in circles,
like swallows in traffic, daring cars to hit them.
"Trees?" I ask, "or verbs?" "YES!" they shriek.
"And STREET names! PLACES!
Names of SHOPS! AROMAS! TEXTURES! COLORS!"
They taunt me. They are Harpies, Furies
Who want me to turn them into Kind Ones,
Into Eumenides. I don't know how.
I would have to write, and write, and write,
Take their dictation, until they drop to sleep.
And then they might be altered.
For some little while, perhaps.
They will pursue me, in any case.
If I read for ten minutes, they will chase me for hours.
I have to buy a mop and a pan, I have to clean the kitchen.
I have to look for work.
This is why I don't read poems
As often as I might.

July 14, 2009