An act pulled back
into the mind
An act pulled back
into the mind
Is poetry a whipping-up
of something special, a
pulled voice
or a kind of trance?
I’ve never known what
a poem is.
My favorites sound like
nothing so much as
someone saying something
interesting.
But that can’t be
enough for a poem.
The worst are about
poetry itself.
Maybe those’re
not even poems.
Maybe they’re just
a baffled boy
seeking a trail.
This mountain trail
is like the highway we took
to get to it.
Stick to it and you’re safe:
people come a’whistling,
a thousand thick
on the thread of life.
But off it there’s nobody.
Just wolves and desert
and waste and wild.