The Poet

This is a lesson I've learned from writing this poem and recieving some wonderful feedback. I challenge you to enjoy reading this poem as much as I do *grin*

* First of all, don't be deterred if you do not understand a poem right away -- or even after repeated readings. Rejecting something we claim not to understand is a cop-out. It's the easy way off the proverbial hook. Try, instead, to experience what's in the poem, even if that experience eludes your understanding. Let the poet startle and perplex you. Learn to go with it, accept it on its own terms, without qualifying at the first difficulty. The key to reading poems is openness. You need to be receptive, to take things as they come, to be alert enough to notice things but relaxed enough to let them drift together as they will. T.S. Eliot though a poem could be appreciated and enjoyed before it was understood. One of the pleasures of reading poetry is mulling over a poem and its reverberations, perhaps for a lifetime. - John Drury, "Creating Poetry" Writer's Digest Books, 1991

The head bobs, not bobblehead-like but with power,
a firm grasp of the audience, the mood
Lips caressing soft words, details, abstractions,
shaping and directing them, a long list of thoughts.

Interactions, renaming the already named.
I dwell not on the inner meanings.
I have time later in bed,
for undressing the whats and whys.

A moment of quiet, a pause, poetic indecision.
Are the presentations mundane enough
         for the awkward faces?
Or do fingers pointing at fingers, broken shovels
         holding up broken walls, and beginning never meeting end
spell doom for the sunshine drenched minds?

The poet lives in mystery, churns mystery
from her gingerbread home with its fiery oven and
unsuspecting students rapturing in her brew.
I tread carefully through the coals,

Hot with tension and smooth words my mind does not comprehend.
I sometimes wonder of poets and poetry,
and then the sun rises on the mundane, melting the
substance of my heart.