God Save Me From Important Poets

What’s hidden?

It’s all out there

Global warming, nuclear destruction, other people’s wars

our wars,

racism,

wife beating,

the tendency of school systems to betray children with special needs.

It’s all out there

Everyday

it is looking in at us, peering

through the glass

poking us with sticks and throwing

bad foods we weren’t meant to eat

amusing itself with the way we contort ourselves to accommodate what we cannot change.

Do we have to celebrate this relationship?

Must we be tough victims of circumstance?

I know it was exciting at first, full of powerful innuendo and

the almost promise of sex.

Secrets told

But aren’t you just a bit bored of ugliness and violence?

It’s all out there,

peering in

inescapable

But here, here inside, there is something else

some neglected houseplant with an impossibly large and fragrant flower

some cheerful child sitting alone in the dusty corner waiting for us to hang up the phone

an old wood floor in need of a mop

a forgotten decoration still up from some party long gone.

Look look look

Here is our hidden beauty

Mightn’t we sing a bit about this?

Can we water the plant and bathe the baby?

Clean the floor and plug in those lights some evening?

Isn’t there something tasty in the kitchen just waiting to be assembled?

And if we do,

If we attend

and protect

and eat

and dance

Might not the neighbors be curious

come out of the their houses, as though just to check the mail

and see us and half invite themselves over?

Might we slowly with intention

push back that zoo-going misery

increase the size of our cage

invert the world?

Inhabit it?

And if we fail 

– and we fail –

(we might fail)

and we are all falling down

anyhow

Can we not go singing and celebrating

crying with understanding

because we have lost what wonderful

because we have understood what was lost

because we know the beauty

because we were in it and we didn’t just give it away?

It is so much easier to write about misery

to call unhappiness meaningful

so much easier to be important.

There is another meaning

and another depth

What’s hidden?