most people don’t do art
it’s important to them that all
the beans are out of the shells and
in the jar
most people don’t write poems
It’s important to them that
all the envelopes are addressed and
are neatly stacked in a pile
while I stack
words in a falling down heap on this page
and hope
that one of these people will take a little time from
their beans and envelopes
to chuckle at my story of my
mother’s blind chicken
or of that rooster who used to
fly at me until
I was afraid to go outside and how
eventually
we had him
for dinner
most people have their roots firmly
planted in the soil
and don’t have this longing
or need at all
while some are like you and I and
have twisted themselves into
sinuous knots searching
for the light that
most people maybe already have or
don’t even want

Copyright © 1998 by David Michael Jackson, All rights reserved