A man says he doesn’t understand my poetry
Frankly i’m not surprised
I learned to write in a hot desert during the cold war
We did air raid drills in a schoolyard full of thick-skinned
ornamental oranges
We saw dioramas of a fallout shelter where a mother wearing a light
print housedress served TV dinners on aluminum trays to children
wearing saddle shoes
The man says poetry should be simple enough
for school girls to understand
But sir, school girls understand everything
Nancy Drew was in love with the obstacle not the clue
My nearsighted eyes had adjusted to reading & by 1962
letters had developed fuzzy antennas like tarantulas or modernism
The psyche rises like mist from things, writes Heraclitus
Sir, when i think of poetry keeping you alive i know
you were entered by incomprehensible light
in the hour of lemon & water
& the great wound of the world has slipped a code
into your shoe
A poem doesn’t fail when you set your one good wing on the ground
It is the wing
It doesn’t abandon you
From Practical Water (Wesleyan University Press, 2011). Copyright © 2011 by Brenda Hillman. Used with the permission of the poet.