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I hereby declare myself a devotee of the short poem. Milton I will not explore, nor the Romantic poets and their sagas of endless stanzas. The difference between me then and me now is that I used to feel guilty about not wanting to read those epic works. It was my literary heritage, after all—a heavy cloak of guilt there to spread over my poor shoulders. Or like a schmear of peanut butter over my whitebread plebeian tastes. Too many metaphors?
Let me say this: we're lucky I've been able to find admiration for the short poem. (That's a loose use of "we", because why should you care at all?) But I'm grateful that I have learned finally to dip my toe into the vast, cold ocean of poetry. Short poetry. Perhaps not an ocean but a cold lake. A pond. Give me cute little couplets, four-line stanzas, alliteration and inner rhymes and near rhymes. But no more than three or four stanzas, please, or I lose interest, close the book, and go back to the day's genre novel—a faster read than even the shortest verse.
Is that what it's all about for me? Speed? The faster I read it the sooner I'm finished and then I'm on to the next. Really? If I were to encounter a character whose reading life this was, would I not feel mild (at the least) contempt for her?
Okay, this is getting too close for comfort. Back to my short poems. Can I write one?
My massage table broke for the second time.
How many chances
do you give a massage table
when every breakdown
means
an unsuspecting body tossed onto the floor
a rude interruption to the bliss
of being touched by knowing hands?
Two breaks and you're out,
you treacherous table.
Fold yourself up
and hide in the closet,
for you've lost your position.
You've been replaced by a loaner,
a narrower, metal-legged loaner
that promises not to buckle.
There's no third chance
for you, my pretty purple massage table.
I dare say I'll miss you.
Copyright © 2022 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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