! ! This Poem (Says)

This poem is friendly: see, it’s wagging its tail, it will follow you anywhere, run off and come back, a perfect companion; this poem loves fun: you want to play dressing up, it’ll laugh and rush off to the attic, the basement, the dressing-up basket; this poem is serious: you want to be silent awhile, rest your head on its shoulder, it will wait for you in sympathetic stillness; this poem is humble: turn it over, write a love poem on the other side, it will glow with your love; this poem is disposable: write a few lines, be angry with yourself, scrumple it up, throw it on the pavement, someone may pick it up, someone may tutt and place it carefully for recycling; this poem is an origami: you can make any shape you like: a paper boat on the waves of destiny; a ladder to reach to where you always wanted that fruit; a crown; a dunce’s hat; a witch’s conic; this poem is elastic: a tablecloth for a picnic, a sheet to cover two lovers, a ground plan for a new world; this poem knows where nothing meets something, nowhere meets everywhere, no time meets all time, anyone meets everyone, this poem has a bright eye whether you read it or not; this poem likes you though it hasn’t met you; this poem is impervious to scorn; it knows who it is, and where things begin and end.