Poetry is where I go to the right the wrongs of the
day. The faucet that, resisting my wrench, drips on;

a box of Mac & Cheese left in the cart, my son
chiding me for forgetting it; the half-read page, sock

that failed to make it to the wash; toys not put away,
lying in wait like a landmine in one of those wars

you see on TV while eating dinner, earth stained
with blood and laundry stuffed to the brim. Poetry

is a child in bed, the lights out, projecting a cosmos
onto the ceiling; his parents fretting over the state

of the world; all the people he may or may not meet
longing like atoms of ice for love to free them of their

loneliness; the heat that sears and the cold that burns;
the agony and the aloe. The first time I was called a poet,

I took offense, for poetry is good for nothing: it neither
makes love nor wages war, nor pays the bills. Poetry

is a fossil record, is the hope that elegizing a shadow
will re-animate the object that casts it; and poets are

archeologists who spend a lifetime scribbling in the soil
because worms are sacred and reviled, there is no God,

and the Word begins with Us.