UNTOLD TALES

Everyone should be a poet –
Revise the Upper Case!
Let Lower Case bards and ballads
Have their season and place –

Democratize rhymes and rhythms –
Formulate ancient Themes –
Dash lines in stanzas – Write visions –
Stitch them in short, straight seams –

Switch syntax – Change morphemes – Drop sense
On a microscope slide –
Illustrate sound – Adjust the lens –
Let old and new collide.

Let music flow like Springs in dells.
Let songs wake us like birds.
Be elliptic – Make light – Ring bells –
Elect Philology – Love words –

Celebrate nature’s endless fame –
Define the infinite –
Give remembrance to the nameless –
Help robins to their nest.

(2 August 2008, Amherst, Massachusetts)