Ars Poetica
Fiction is a bungalow --
preferably camouflaged,
with a high wit wind whistling through.
There is something in the attic
and someone about to ring the bell.
But a poem
a poem,
it is a cathedral.
Still air
rising,
ringing
the vaults;
finials,
pinnacles,
pointing,
and all the little angels
looking down.
Between boughs, between even
the teeth of pine cones, or seaming
the backs of new blades, poems
are in the name Forget-Me-Not, in the Sioux
meaning "singing river" or the French
for "silent mountain." They are the knowledge
of a bird, its name, and journey,
While Fiction verbs from noun to noun
conflict crashing into crisis
determined to make good time, Poetry's
got its thumb out, its eyes upon the sky.
—Tracy Koretsky