Blast #267

                                                                  Poetry

          This Sunday's New York Times Book Review magazine is devoted to poetry.  What's particularly interesting (to me) is a short piece which shows original drafts  edited by their poets ---  handwritten notes and ideas in the margins.  Using that as inspiration, I composed a poem (below) but wanted to use Billy Collins's "Introduction to Poetry" as a reminder to fellow teachers, poets, and readers just what goes into thinking​ about poetry.

Introduction to Poetry
( Billy Collins)
 
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. 
 
 
 

​The Last Dog
 
This is the last dog
 I’ll take for a walk.
 
That will sleep at the foot of the bed
and wag so ferociously as I unlock
the front door, entering the home.
 
Evening walks these days,
remembering puppies and “pedigrees,”
 rascals and ruffians,
cuties and cuddlers
 
flashing by on that magic lantern that is memory.
 
The one who lived with all the cats,
The puppies who devoured Mom’s couch,
The one who killed her puppies.
 
The perfect Jack, smarter than us.
The bumbling, lumbering Beau-beau, surrounded by schoolchildren.
The neurotic mutts inherited from parents;
the stray, Max, and his college degree.
 
That continual stream,
that river of canines
flowing through your life,
“on the bus” (with you) all the way.
 
They never judge
and never scold.
The constancy of their love
​buoys you
always.
 
This is the last dog
 I’ll take for a walk.