AH...WHY DIDN'T THEY TELL ME?

These past months I've been reading

    POETS...

Robert Hass, Mary Oliver, T.S. Eliot,

    Marianne Moore, Emily Dickenson,

Robert Burns, William Wordsworth,

    John Donne, William Blake, and

taking a course in Shakespeare!

Have I understood all I've read?

    No, not all...

But that's not the point, is it?

I must tell you…
    There are some poets
that I simply cannot fathom.

Had a whole course in
     Robert Browning once-
In college.  He himself
     once confessed--
"When I wrote it, only God and I
     knew what it meant….
Now only God knows."

Do we understand everything

    there is to know---that is 

somewhere hidden in a great

    painting?

Do we understand all the chords

    and skill involved in the

great symphonies?

Maybe poetry is more important

    than we've ever thought.

It is for smoothing out the wrinkles

    in one's mind.

So that tomorrow...the thinking field

    is level...

Then we can think better, work better,

    write better...do everything better.

Poems will do it. Not only do they

    pluck heart-strings long silent...

oft-times...

    But because we are dealing with

unused, unthought of, unheard of

    word patterns...

as well as unthought-of thoughts..

    I say: poems will smooth

the wrinkles from our minds.

AH! Why didn't they tell me?!

Sooner.

********30*******

BY MIL

01/17/14