Song Almost

To give pleasure, a poem is best experienced slowly and without expectation.

It should be read and reread without concern for meaning.

"You can't tie a poem to a chair and beat the meaning out of it with a rubber hose," Billy Collins famously said. Clarity and meaning, you see, are not the same thing.

A poem does have meaning, of course, but what it means to the poet and what it means to you can be wildly different, and often are. To the reading experience, we bring our own histories. That it stirs something in us is its only purpose -- that's what makes it art. There will be no quiz later.

With that, I offer a poem, still steaming from creation like a pie fresh from the oven.

Already I've said too much.



Songwriter's Prayer

Engines burning overhead,

               drowned in clouds,

Engines burning on the road,

               drowned in hills,

Heavy, sinking conveyance,

               how does it go?

Blackbirds burning in the trees,

               drowned in leaves near their red deaths,

Desire perverse where the lyric hides,

Let there be one long pull toward the sound,

Let there be tides.



copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved