Vision of St. Augustine (Ars Poetica)
by Gabriel Z. McCreath
No one wants to be imagined, but people pray
to be remembered. Poetry is like an imagined saint
or a butterfly in the brain. “Is poetry a demand
for the memory?” Giddy, he smiled at me
from the passenger seat. It’s a blood-and-guts
type of thing. Poetry, bleeding all over my lap.
“I learned how to laugh in my dreams,” I confessed.
I learned how to dream on the page, he replied.
And when I told him that I could feel
a voice in my bones, a memory
in my hands, a heaviness in my head,
he breathed deep—and sat silently awhile.
Then: Nothing is wrong with you,
he chanted, Nothing is wrong with you.
His form was more vivid with each syllable.
All he would say—Nothing is wrong with you.