Mountain Drives

Mountain Drives

or “How to Read a Poem”

“They begin beating it with a hose / to find out what it really means.” Billy Collins

A first-time drive around a poem’s slopes

Will find your focus tuned to every turn.

Your energy

Will mostly be

Engaged in staying on the road,

In navigating all the twists of meaning,

Determining direction in your reading,

And tracking the author’s mind

In hopes that you will find

The poem’s themes he’s hidden in its turns.

But while your eyes are plastered on the road

You’ll fail to see the daisies on the hill;

The mountain sight

Upon your right

Will come and go and you’ll never know.

Surrounded by a beautiful world of words

You’ll only watch the way the poem curls

And coils. To stay alive

You’ll focus on the drive

And let the surrounding scene go by at will.

But by your second outing, and more your third,

Having learned the road on previous jaunts,

You’ll be free to see

The intricacies

That make the poem a delightful drive:

The berry bush that’s dressed in buzzing bees,

The way the sunlight filters through the trees

Like spider webs of light.

To drive a poem twice

Is giving it what every poem wants.