POEM - Poetry Is...

Poetry is where beauty goes
When no one knows what else to do with it;
It is the stuff that slides off the page
Of a newspaper when reading at night;
It appears as static on a Television talk show

But it is also that moment we stutter
When we try to describe that which transforms;
It is the basement of everything we ever
Thought we’d tossed away in our lives –

I am not of this world, I thought that you knew this.
I am made of what is discarded and prayerfully forgotten;
I am made of what is devalued like trash
But which makes up most of the space there is
Between each electron and nucleus of every atom.

I am not of this world, though. I thought that you knew this.

M B 7/2005