Poems, like most great art, are the art of telling the truth of life just as we live it. I learned this in the work of Joy Harjo, Mary Oliver, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elizabeth Bishop, Ilya Kaminsky.
Sometimes the truth can only be fully realized, in me and in the world, as a poem. It doesn't render as richly to describe a few minutes at the park by telling you that I sat in the grass at the park and enjoyed it.
Instead, I describe how soft the spring grass was
behind my head
between my fingers
And how warm the air
on my bare arms
And how the wind gave up its secrets
only to the very tips of the treetops,
only to the redwoods who murmured among themselves
gathered in a fairy ring with branches outstretched to each other
holding each neighbor in an unseen system of roots.
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And then how can anyone deny it? It's as true as I am, as you are.