So I racked my brain as I fidgeted about,

For I could feel there was a poem dying to get out.

I couldn't quite understand his tongue,

But the volume of his voice was next to none

As he hollered on a line that I couldn't quite tap.

Periodically sure he had fallen through the gap,

I would jump as he seemed to call "I'm still here!"

After which his words would again become unclear.

And I would sit and say to him "I need to learn how

To silence the static that drowns you out now,

But all I can hear is how bad all your rage

Wants to be translated and put to the page."

Then suddenly I could hear him clear as a bell:

"There's no rage here, only a desire to tell

All of the people who have silenced their ears

Of the poetry all around, if they just learn to hear;

Because, as you know, we are all over the place:

We're the leaves in the trees, the whiskers on your face,

We're the reason you can't turn away,

From a horrible wreck on a beautiful day,

Or listen to the shrieks that sound like a song

As the fathers tell the children of all they've done wrong.

Show them all that they need to see

That the very air they breathe is made of poetry."

After which he was quiet, I suspect

To allow me to sit, allow me to reflect.

I listened to my own words as they swam in my head,

Then I sat down and wrote the lines you just read,

In hopes that you will see for better or for worse

That the world is a poem, and we are all our own verse.

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