Fear of Poetry
©Helen S. Andrews 2009
Who’s to say what Poetry is?
John Lennon is dead, I tell my son.
Gentling the words, I say,
I will miss all the poems he will never write.
I am to say what Poetry is.
Poetry is fear and possibilities.
I would fill the pages with the images of the day
when caught in the rain in Central Park
My love and I found a magic door.
We ran inside the stone tower, hiding there,
then emerging into the remaining drizzle to find
only a very old man playing a flute.
Certain of an enchantment
we ran to the steps of the museum in our soaked clothing.
There is poetry in the letters resting for 37 years,
waiting to be re-read; the letters from the sweetest boy I ever knew.
His words are like a time capsule of my heart.
Twenty-four letters from an innocent boy
whose one wish was to be good at whatever he tried.
There was poetry in the letters I asked the priest to burn
and I was never certain he did --
he may have untied the red ribbon
and read with his judgmental eyes the words of that second love.
I never asked him, and now he’s dead.
I want to fill a page with a poem about the llama in the field to my right
as I drive home, not through the crowded town streets,
but past the farms on the edge of the town;
past the llama that guards the fat brown sheep
and doesn’t know it’s not one of them.
There are poems in me about necklaces made up of lost earrings;
and crows that number seven thousand in one flock;
and how it amazes me that snow and fire have the same sound to my ears.
Who’s to say what is Poetry is?
Is it a song without the music;
is it whatever I say it is,
fearing you will not agree?