
We’re no poets. We’re not Shakespeare nor Wordsworth, not Auden nor Chaucer. We don’t have our collected works in the local book store, not in any book store, and no works to collect for that matter. For even if our drawers are full of poetry, a careful selection of the myriad of false starts on our computers, printed out and stapled and carefully placed next to our grades from middle school and a Christmas card from someone who’s no longer with us — even though we have more sonnets than Shakespeare ever wrote and more haikus than he ever knew, even though we aspire to write the Truth and pour out our souls unto the paper or the screen, even though we smith words at every opportunity, we’re no wordsmiths. And we’re certainly no poets.
And yet here we are, at the windowless end of a downtown pub, lowering our voices to a somber hush, wrinkling our foreheads and narrowing our eyes. Love is like a butterfly, we say, and once you had a future but now you have a past, and, with even greater emphasis, my tears are like droplets of morning dew.
And we hear the murmurs of adulation flutter through the dim room, ooooh, aaahhh, magnifique, nice, very nice. And we bask in the glory a couple of seconds, even bow slightly to the applause like a petal bowing to raindrops. And then we sit down again, and join the choir for another round, oooh, aaahhh, magnifique, nice, very nice, knowing full well that our words won’t live so long as men can breathe or eyes can see. And not giving a damn.
No. We are no poets, nor were meant to be. We’re bureaucrats and teachers and students and dentists and retired engineers. We’re unemployed. We’re bankers, for crying out loud, and we really suck at our job and really hate everything from the dress code to the petty bickering every coffee break.
We’re no poets, and we don’t write amazing poetry, not really. But we’re spellbound by words and we want everyone to have the same experience. And every time someone gets closer to being spellbound by their own words, we go ooooh, aaahhh, magnifique, nice, very nice. And we applaud, and they bow, like a petal to raindrops. And when they sit down again, they glow.
And if that isn’t poetic, I don’t know what is.
(In the photo: Alan Kikuchi-White, one of the good people on earth.)