The Trouble with Poetry Read Online Free

dictionary
    where my eyes fell upon the word
lanyard
.
    No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
    could send one more suddenly into the past—
    a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
    by a deep Adirondack lake
    learning how to braid thin plastic strips
    into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
    I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
    or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
    but that did not keep me from crossing
    strand over strand again and again
    until I had made a boxy
    red and white lanyard for my mother.
    She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
    and I gave her a lanyard.
    She nursed me in many a sickroom,
    lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
    set cold face-cloths on my forehead,
    and then led me out into the airy light
    and taught me to walk and swim,
    and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
    Here are thousands of meals, she said,
    and here is clothing and a good education.
    And here is your lanyard, I replied,
    which I made with a little help from a counselor.
    Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
    strong legs, bones and teeth,
    and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
    and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
    And here, I wish to say to her now,
    is a smaller gift—not the archaic truth
    that you can never repay your mother,
    but the rueful admission that when she took
    the two-tone lanyard from my hands,
    I was as sure as a boy could be
    that this useless, worthless thing I wove
    out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Boy Shooting at a Statue
    It was late afternoon,
    the beginning of winter, a light snow,
    and I was the only one in the small park
    to witness the lone boy running
    in circles around the base of a bronze statue.
    I could not read the carved name
    of the statesman who loomed above,
    one hand on his cold hip,
    but as the boy ran, head down,
    he would point a finger at the statue
    and pull an imaginary trigger
    imitating the sounds of rapid gunfire.
    Evening thickened, the mercury sank,
    but the boy kept running in the circle
    of his footprints in the snow
    shooting blindly into the air.
    History will never find a way to end,
    I thought, as I left the park by the north gate
    and walked slowly home
    returning to the station of my desk
    where the sheets of paper I wrote on
    were like pieces of glass
    through which I could see
    hundreds of dark birds circling in the sky below.

Genius
    was what they called you in high school
    if you tripped on a shoelace in the hall
    and all your books went flying.
    Or if you walked into an open locker door,
    you would be known as Einstein,
    who imagined riding a streetcar into infinity.
    Later, genius became someone
    who could take a sliver of chalk and squire pi
    a hundred places out beyond the decimal point,
    or a man painting on his back on a scaffold,
    or drawing a waterwheel in a margin,
    or spinning out a little night music.
    But earlier this week on a wooded path,
    I thought the swans afloat on the reservoir
    were the true geniuses,
    the ones who had figured out how to fly,
    how to be both beautiful and brutal,
    and how to mate for life.
    Twenty-four geniuses in all,
    for I numbered them as Yeats had done,
    deployed upon the calm, crystalline surface—
    forty-eight if we count their white reflections,
    or an even fifty if you want to throw in me
    and the dog running up ahead,
    who were at least smart enough to be out
    that day—she sniffing the ground,
    me with my head up in the bright morning air.

The Student
    My poetry instruction book,
    which I bought at an outdoor stall along the river,
    contains many rules
    about what to avoid and what to follow.
    More than two people in a poem
    is a crowd, is one.
    Mention what clothes you are wearing
    as you compose, is another.
    Avoid the word
vortex
,
    the word
velvety
, and the word
cicada
.
    When at a loss for an ending,
    have some brown hens standing in the rain.
    Never admit that you revise.
    And—always keep your poem in one season.
    I try to be