A Poem Can Be

A hand

A hook

Texting

A meteor

A mirror

A prayer

A process

A thought

A confession

Music filled

A work of art

A homesickness

A time stopper

A work of life

Language bound

A beautiful sky

A frozen moment

A lesson for us

A shooting star

A flexible thing

A soul in action

Wind in a bucket

A verbal painting

The original text

A dream made flesh

An act of discovery

A place for an idea

A confession of faith

A form of questioning

A voyage of discovery

A metrical composition

A machine made of words

A memory caught at play

A record of a discovery

The realization of love

The words, not the lines

A contribution to reality

A cry of the unborn heart

An invitation to a voyage

Thoughts that fill the sky

A way to discover questions

The language of particulars

A construction of inner space

A small machine made of words

An effort to find fulfillment

A cup of words open to the sky

A way of saying more with less

Never finished, only abandoned

A way to ask questions clearly

A reaching-out toward expression

Like a score for the human voice

A perfect embodiment of the world

Making music with words and space

A frozen moment melted by each reader

A perfecting of a feeling in language

A spider web spun with words of wonder

The instrument of emotion transference

Words islanded in a sea of white paper

A tribute to perseverance and survival

A way of making us forget how we wrote it

A box to put other things in, for safe keeping

A window that hangs between two or more people

A private story, no matter how apparently public

A radio that can broadcast continuously for years

Not a thing we see but a light by which we may see

A momentary stay against the confusion of the world

A place where to imagine is to feel what it is to be

The particulars of a song waking upon a bed of sound

A form of refrigeration that stops language going bad

A way to discover the results of certain suppositions

Woven lace held in place, by whispers made of thunder

The point of origin for all the language and narrative arts

A finished work of the mind, not the work of a finished mind

A nuance of sound, delicately operating upon a cataract of sense

An instant of lucidity in which the entire organism participates

A chance taken - a chance that may lead to fulfillment or disaster

A kind of machine for producing the poetic state by means of words

Where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words

A structure of signifiers which absorbs and reconstitutes the signified

A place where the conditions of beyondness and withinness are made palpable

A verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table

Neutrino - mainly nothing - it has no mass and can pass through the earth undetected

What the reader lives through under the guidance of the text and experiences as relevant to the text

Like a child - at some point we have to let it go and trust that it will make its own way in the world

The device through which the ordinary world is seen in a new way - engaging, compelling, even beautiful

Energy transferred from where the poet got it, by way of the poem itself, all the way over to the reader

A piece of writing in which the words are chosen for their beauty and sound and are carefully arranged, often in short lines which rhyme

A piece of writing in which the expression of feelings and ideas is given intensity by particular attention to diction, rhythm, and imagery

A message in a bottle sent out in the not always greatly hopeful belief that somewhere and some time it will wash up on land, on heartland perhaps