Give Me a Poem, and I'll Give You Myself

Sometimes, I can't help but be romantic. I think it comes from being taught to analyze poetry too well (thank you, Ms. Joanne) - all of sudden, everything is beautiful. Everything is rhythm, everything is verse. There's beauty in everything, not just the stuff that inspires so much poetry and music, like flowers, nature and celestial bodies, but other things too. The way my mother chops garlic. The sound of my computer keys. The shape of my deflated pink balloon. There is beauty in banality. I think you can find poetry in just about anything, and I'm thankful for that. I'm almost a simpering romantic because of it. My best friend is always telling me I'm going to end up marrying the wrong guy (if I ever do marry, that's still up in the air) just because he wrote me a song or a limerick or something along those lines. She's right. It doesn't even have to be that good, it just has to be dedicated to me and I'd melt. I am that much of a fool. The thing is, we're surrounded by so much beauty and so many atrocities, yet people only ever seem to see the latter and I think that's a shame. Maybe being too romantic and falling for a simple abab rhyme scheme will be my downfall, but I'll gladly fall. At least, for a while, I would have had a piece of the world's beauty in my grasp.

Final thought: Valentine for Ernest Mann, Naomi Shihab Nye

You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two"
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.