That Is Poetry

I wasn't going to write today, but then I started listing thoughts I'd had at lunch. I thought about writing about a blank page and asking my readers to see on it symbols of their wisdom -- press their own ink-stained hands to it, if you will. But as soon as I let the pen go to the page, I'd have ruined that blankness. I thought I might write about a dream I had in which we all take turns dying and I talked to one man and later found he had already gone -- exited through the turnstile at the end of a crowded concourse, if you will. I opened a web browser to distract myself from writing and examined the face of an actual man who had died last night. I studied his wrinkles. They were the beginnings of an old face. I saw their pattern was about as complex as the lines on my palms which I occasionally ink and press on a piece of paper (if you will). And all that, I decided -- the face, the hands, the ink, the readers, the dream -- all that is poetry.

Copyright Louise Robertson