Poem for the week: "That's Poetry"

That’s Poetry

I picked up Keats this morning,

        and then Shelley, but I wasn’t in the mood

for either; and I picked up Immortal Poems

       of the English Language, but I decided to

make coffee instead; and as I waited for

       my coffee I browsed through a word book:

30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary—

        the more words we have, the better we can

express ourselves, indispensable for a poet;

       but my heart wasn’t in it. I poured my coffee

and took a sip and pondered my situation:

       words, words, and more words. Knowledge,

knowledge, and more knowledge, and “to the

       making of many books there is no end and

much study is a weariness of the flesh” said the

       Preacher in Ecclesiastes, and we’re back to

where we started. I opened my book on the

       immortal poems and read Shelly’s Ozymandias

to give clarity to my feelings: it’s not how

       many words we know, it’s how we put

them together. That’s poetry.