In the practice of poetry, the profession of wonder,
the width of stanza widens as word wardens wander.
Expressions of travel, though, will irk the housebound,
no matter how artful and novel; they’ll be troublesome
To us bored by sunsets, at Trieste, East Egg, or Big Sur;
we’ll tut-tut trite landscapes and cavil at obeisance
To foreign ways and means of collecting into sects for or
against inane device, intelligent artifice notwithstanding.
Expressions of lusty love, as well, will overamuse a few but
underthrall voyeurs more titillated by photos of fellatio, or
moans produced through devotional use of tongues. Felicitudes
to cats and odes to dogs, too, are practically as useless
Beyond the rails of corrals we rule as sheriffs, our cells
adorned with palm prints and first words of our darlings.
When they express what they wonder by way of poems,
poets practice CPR, such attention to it’s a, b, c’s
is the airy superstructure that makes breath strong as
Roman aqueducts, durable enough to carry torrents of thought.
Dave Read