Poetry
THE LITTLE JOYS OF TEACHING POETRY
I massage your hands over the stanzas
Naming each part to your eyeful delight
Each little meter shudders letters down your words
Each rhyming scheme shivers music down your lines
Your mouth opens
To speak—little cries—
What you already know, did, wrote—
Alone in your youthful ignorance
Now all our instruments
are fluid filled
engorged with earnestness
Leaving us each delirious and titillated with
…my old knowledge
…your new talent
Teaching a first prosody lesson
Is like making love to a virgin
I teach gingerly
This is great power
ORTHOPEDIST
(For Dr. Scott Sledge, San Antonio, TX)
I am only the mender of bones
cartilage, ligaments, tendons.
I can only touch you gently–
I can only not smile or smile
at the furtive stories of slips,
your furious versions of crashes
I am only the mender of bones,
cartilage, ligaments, tendons.
Your heart is not my specialty
and the agony of your spirit
requires various microsurgery
instruments which have not been evolved
I am only the mender of bones,
cartilage, ligaments, tendons.
Your distress is beyond my healing
I cannot stop the facial rains
or earthquake tremors of your terror
shocking you into more painful days
I am only the mender of bones
cartilage, ligaments, tendons.
Don’t bring dead joys or loves to me
Do not lay your lives at my feet–
I can only look and cut and sew
Only time and God can heal your woundings