Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide



or press an ear against its hive.



I say drop a mouse into a poem

And watch him probe his way out,



or walk inside the poem's room

and feel the walls for a light switch.



I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author's name on the shore.



But all they want to do

Is tie the poem to a chair with rope

And torture a confession out of it.



They begin beating it with a hose

To find out what it really means.