Poetry
A colleague asks the same question
every time I run into him.
“What makes more sense,
a bridge or a poem?”
If we were in the Pentagon
he would be asking,
Is a cruise missile more deadly
or a slingshot?
He looks at me the way he looked down
at Mary Ellen in 4th grade,
her desk anchored in a pool
of urine. As if I too can never
reclaim my reputation.
A pedophile has a slightly lower standing
in a community than a poet.
Though both he would argue
are warnings to parents.
One dangerous, the other useless.
“Give me a screwdriver, a hammer,
anything but a poem.
What would I do with it?
Patch a hole in the roof?”
I take his affronts on
the way a ship’s figurehead
refuses to duck the waves
slamming into it.
Maybe my love for poetry
is old fashioned,
something to amuse
old ladies in book clubs.
“You’ll never get anywhere,” he repeats,
his voice happy at the thought.
“God knows why you surround
yourself with poetry.
It’s unintelligible. I’d rather read
a semester of law books
than the slimmest
volume of verse.”
When I turn away and retreat
towards my desk, reciting
“Sailing to Byzantium”
what must he hear? He hears a fool,
a middle aged man
with the doggedness
of a blind man setting out
through a thick wood.