by Vern Fein
In his poem “How To Be A Poet,”
Wendell Berry tells me to sit down and be quiet.
Let my mind breathe.
He lists everything I might bring—
affection, inspiration, patience,
growing older—and says we should doubt
any reader who likes our work.
Write without air-conditioning.
Communicate slowly—there are only
sacred places, nothing unsacred,
but some desecrated places.
I found it on a poetry site I read daily.
Am I the only one who read this Berry poem?
Perhaps if I were sick, I would have missed it.
Perhaps no one else in the world read it.
How many of the eight billion people on Earth
read his intriguing poem today about how to wave
a magic wand and bring verse out of your head
or dross as the day may be?
I will consider his words as I write
a poem today or tomorrow
strutting and fretting my hour upon the page
that perhaps no one will ever read
or a few outside my family
or some retired guy whiling away
the time he has left,
honoring what was penned
so long ago.