Poetry Is Whatever

Poetry is whatever
Matters most to that poet

Whether or not what matters
Matters to you, as reader,

Or sings your kind of music
Or swings the way you love to—

The lucky thing for poets,
Or for most of them, at least,

Is that, as all known readers
So far seem to be humans

And poets are human, too
(Or most of them, more or less)

When a poet manages
To get whatever matters

To the poet in the poem,
It’s likely there’s a human—

Maybe quite a few—for whom
What mattered most matters, too