Poetry reaches here and there by soaring. It points in the wrong direction and heads off there regardless; it directs us to the ossuary, to museum drawers in bloom, to birds and the green facts of nesting.

Poetry is the lesson of the doubtful person, pausing. It is implicit in the life of an expert on things and an authority on nothing. Poetry is a series of controlled blunders.

Poetry is living elsewhere; the city radiant with all of its ideas; the open throat of days we inhabit with abandon. Poetry is an apartment in the north where my story began, filled with the rhythmic ratchets of frogs.

Poetry sits on our cluttered bureau like a choice slab of cheese. A poet is a guest who likes people because they taste good. The poet reveals a trap for forms of magic.

Poetry dances with happiness at the start of the new feast. It is the second spring of our tango across the tundra. Poetry is change, like a chord the tension snaps.

Poetry is Ice Age Man in the cave of himself, making effigies of beasts and killing them before he goes out on the real hunt with the magic of that killing on his side. Poetry is the migration of a herd of animal statues.

Poetry is troubles swapped for something fresh; the monstrance containing the host. The dead, the beloved, the detested – these are some of its objects.

Poetry stills to a lagoon at low tide. Its dredge hauls yield a final treat we share.

Poetry – the upturned saw blade of its kiss; its crucial first cut.