Consider the word "ocean".
It contains the sound of a crashing wave.
With every one,
it speaks its own name.
Likewise, the words "leaves" and "grasses"
contain the sounds of themselves
moving in the wind.
Clocks used to say their own names
every second or so.
Now, they're mute.
Consider the word "moon".
It contains two of itself.
And the word "eye" also has two of itself
plus a nose.
The word "banana"
is long, smooth, and narrow
with a stem.
And yet:
"Shorter" is longer than "longer".
"Fewer" is more than "more".
"Bigger" is smaller than "smaller".
And "start" comes after
"end".
"Lite" is the lite way to spell "light".
Certainly not the right way,
but perhaps the rite way,
at least in some circles.
In other circles,
there's a brand of social commentary
that's anti-brands.
In these circles,
there is no right way
to spell "lite".
While visiting a cathedral in Vienna,
one of us (I don't remember who now)
pulled a water bottle from a backpack
and it slipped and splashed
shattered and scattered sharp shards
some catching the colors from the high stained glass sun
that shone on the stone floor,
while others hid in shadows under the pews.
And two attendants rushed in
with mops and brooms
as if this happened every day
or maybe every hour.
While visiting a cathedral in Vienna,
one of us (I don't remember who now)
pulled a water bottle from a backpack
and it slipped and splashed
shattered and scattered
and stained the glass sun
some catching the stone floor.
Two attendants that hid in pews every day
shone on the sharp colors
while others under the shards from high shadows
rushed in every hour
as if with mops and brooms.
Or maybe this happened.
Meanwhile, the eight fifteen coyote was late.
By then, he should have been snuffling through the field next door.
But the fat, sloppy snow flakes now mixing with the rain
fell on no coyote,
and no mouse had to shrink into its hole to
evade a searching snout.
The eleven o'clock coyote was on time.
Either that, or the eight fifteen coyote was nearly three hours late
and the eleven o'clock coyote hadn't yet appeared.
But coyotes are famously not much for talking
so it was hard to tell either way. In their own company,
they'll chatter like gossips and
sing like broken choirs.
But don't think they'll answer a simple query about their schedules.
Meanwhile, the eleven o'clock coyote read the ground with his nose
and the sloppy snow flakes got their act together and turned into
biting crystals of cold
that started collecting in the wind shadows between the blades of grass.
After a while,
the eleven o'clock coyote moved on.
He had a schedule to keep, after all.
And the snow moved on.
There were other landscapes to decorate, after all.
Meanwhile, an eagle that had been loitering above
for her eleven thirty pickup
swooped and swiped a few building materials
and she moved on as well, trailing them behind her as she went.
The tree doesn't care
who the president is.
And the hummingbirds don't care
about the global pandemic.
The ornamental boulder guarding the garden doesn't care
about global warming.
It sits, stoic, meeting its obligations,
and when we're gone it will be here, still,
with no obligations at all.
I'm starting to learn about poetry.
Here is some of what I've learned:
Poetry is beyond words.
With a poem, less is more.
Each word must carry twice its own
wait…
A poem should not hammer
home the same point over
and over
and over
and over
and over
and over
and over
and over
and over
and over.
In a poem, words can play,
or a poem can play on words.
It can mean more than it says,
or say more than it means.
A couplet has two lines with matching rhyme and meter,
Like this:
"A poem really doesn't have to rhyme,
And it doesn't have to keep strict time."
Haiku has three lines:
Five syllables then seven,
Finishing with five.
A sonnet has fourteen lines…
Never mind.
A poem should lead a horse to water…
…but not make it drink.
And so, in summary,
here is what I've learned so far about poetry: