The Last Wolf Died When All Was Well

Really, no one can
Pronounce enjambment.
(You lie down in poem,
Tell the story
Staring up through trees.)

But we've got this thing
About prosody,
About altering
Natural rhythms
To cry "Poetry!"

It's okay. It's not dumb
To parse the banal,
To chop your phrases
At the kitchen sink,
And feel creative.

Still poems are still poems.
They don't need chanting
Like menus need French
And priests need Latin
To transform white bread.

Should high verse vanish
From moonlit forests
Our dreams will adapt,
As when there were wolves,
And now, coyotes.