Room 218

i say:
what you must do is to think of your idea
something you really have
to say
and at all costs keep it out of your poem

your poem is a bridge to that morsel
maybe just a battered sign hinting to the direction
in which the reader may find your insight

and he (i say ‘he’ because women read men’s poetry these days
and men still don’t read poems)
must have already debated the importance of being clever
versus the importance of being stone serious
and understand that delivering either
will relegate him to greeting cards

and he must now, hearing the assignment, look about the room
quickly dismissing the globe
not even noticing the flag
pausing for a minute looking at me
at the way i scribble quickly in my notebook
and wonder momentarily if there are actually poetic ideas
that deserve such vigor
or perhaps just groceries

his wandering will continue past the ficus
and end upon the shoulders of the young woman in front of him
he must understand her
to be at once fragile not like a flower, certainly not like a lilly
but like a tall and old birch
or even better, a nylon sail – faded yellow with a white stripe
and also not fragile. He will say ‘not fragile’
even though at first it does not sound quite right

he thinks of his reader
someone who has the money and desire to buy poetry:
a woman anywhere from forty-eight to fifty-four
but he does not want to take her money and run
he wants to see her off with a polite wave
and maybe a peck on the cheek

even though he heard me before
this is when he understands
that he must keep the lines
‘for but a moment
i am the breeze and she the sail
she uses me to glide across the waves
i have created’
from existing
that it is the loss at the realization
if he does not write these words
she will never understand what he felt
just for a moment

and he will achieve that ultimate tension
in his poetry
as he creates a eulogy
for his better poem
that will never exist

lifting his pen
only after we are alone
for a stanza after the bell