A Lesson from James Wright

 If James Wright could put in his book of poems a blank page

dedicated to "the Horse David Who Ate One of My Poems,"

I am ready to follow him along

the sweet path he cut through the dryness and suggest that you sit now

very quietly in some lovely wild place, and listen to the silence.

And I say that this, too, is a poem

Let us leave our minds blank for horses, over ridden, abandoned, shipped to slaughter

Let us leave our minds blank for the sparrows dropping from the skies and the flies upon children's faces

Let us leave our minds blank for the wildness without to colonize the wildness within

Let us leave our minds blank for that we love and may one day come to love.

Let us leave our minds blank in honor of all beings

All beings, who I say that too, are poems.

What kind of poem do you write today?