Poems

We read something in class.

The words cart peppery scents;

they give off heat like summer mornings,

whiffs of mud-just-dried and wild violets,

crushed, after you leave macadam,

and make tracks to the woods,

mid-childhood, mid-field,

when you go off on your own

suddenly angry for no reason.

You might swim in the pond, alone,

something forbidden;

you might see a deer or woodchuck,

a red-tailed hawk, that would be arresting.

The poem is not about these things

but these things are about the poem.

One student shrugs, says, her stuff's

all the same: nature nature nature

and then boom.  Tell me, then,

I say, about the boom.