When a poem begins in our heads, it usually does so with some kind of descriptive imagery, turn of phrase, or metaphor. It jumps out at us from nowhere, or, as is often the case, emerges directly out of something we hear or read. Contained within this initial material usually is the thought that soon will become the poem, though at this point most of us really aren’t aware of it or even where it’s taking us; the poem forms around these first seeds, gradually expanding and taking shape. We collaborate with the poem throughout, always taking turns controlling direction and losing control, adding balance and subtracting disarray to the body of thought. With each new word or phrase, the poem lurches in another direction, sending a message to the other words that new adjustments are require to the whole. The best comparison is a flock of birds constantly adjusting to unseen reasons for movement this way or that; possessing the illusion of collective wisdom, the grouping really is responding to new and subtle directions communicated from the outer edges of the flock. Similarly, the way a poem knows what it doesn’t know, and becomes what it does, comes only after it has arrived.
THE WAY A POEM KNOWS
Something about the way a poem knows,
something that keeps us reaching into it
from a place of dreaming not unlike this.
The poem calls and sets a path in the dark
and light fields of our belief. The poem sees
the truth in the telling is not revealed in what
it doesn’t know, but in finding itself
released like a stream from its knowing.
Something about the way a poem finds
its place in our hearts, something that finds
the truth of what is meant to be but harder
still to say. Something about a poem that asks
and answers, setting loose the slow riddle
of its voice, something it freely confesses
to knowing, like the clear thread of this thinking
about to discover the way a poem finds its end.