There Is a Poem in Here Somewhere
When I was barely 22,
a bearded graduate student,
shadow growing longer by the day,
I met with my overweight poetry advisor
towards the end of autumn,
both of us wishing
we were somewhere else,
perhaps a small fishing village in Portugal
or a smoky jazz club in New York.
I showed him my poem,
a one-pager on onion skin paper
and waited for his dim murmur of praise.
"There's a poem in here, somewhere," he said,
not quite shaking his head, but wanting to.
"No," I replied,"this IS the poem,"
doing my best to stare him down,
but he, having long ago lost interest in his wife,
would not give up.
We just sat there for a while.
Now it is five decades later
and I finally understand what he meant.
YES, there is a poem in here somewhere,
in fact, a poem within a poem
and another within that
and so on until the cows come home,
the only thing remaining
my impulse to write
and the sound of a crow
outside my half-opened window,
or might it just be
the creaking of my chair
as I stand to exit the room?
