I have been eating poetry
Wildly gorging on it,
like it was chocolate, and you know—
I cannot keep candy in the house.
I’d be fat as a tick, as Mama used to say.
Poetry is calorie-free, sweeter than syrup
but sometimes so bitter it stings going down.
I sat alone in a softly-lit hushed restaurant last
Saturday night, reading poetry, poetry, poetry
and savoring vegetarian chili, roast carrots and
a cold brown ale.
There is no happiness like mine:
so much poetry—no room, even, for dessert.
(An ode to Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mark Strand, who died this week.)
eeo 