“Telling It”
To speak out clean.
Let the words be
not wonderful but the plainest
nouns, the skinniest verbs
that are themselves
the poem, not merely holding
it together.
The shape of the poetry:
the shape of words, the words their own shapes,
the shape of many words together.
All right.
Poetry is the soup
not the can or kettle
wrapped around it.
Telling it, telling it clean
is the meat.
Today the words are right
They are right here.
I find what I mean
To tell myself the truth.
