Which Is Barely a Poem

Stories that bind are often
Barely narratives at all.
The goal’s not entertainment

In a conventional sense—
It’s about the recounting
Of some shared experience

That’s especially potent
If only one teller can
Remember it at all well,

As when children ask parents
About about what their births were like
Or when children tell parents,

Disappearing into fog,
Some fond memory to lure
Their parents back a moment.

What was it you used to do,
Papa, that chased my bad dreams?
I know you commanded me,

Sort of, like, You won’t have bad dreams
Tonight! And somehow, it worked.
How’d that even get started?

You were eight, in that bunk bed
In the house in Hurricane,
And you’d had a string of nights

With nightmares, and you wanted
To make them stop. I told you
To tell yourself you wouldn’t

Have bad dreams that night, but you
Didn’t believe that would work.
On a whim I raised my hand

And said I was telling you,
You won’t have bad dreams tonight.
The first night we got lucky.

I think since I trusted you.
After the first night, you did.
And basically that was it,

The story of how Papa
Stopped you from having bad dreams.
Not much of a tale is it?

But much more satisfying
Than a plot twist. And who can
Even tell which of us said what

Just now in retelling it?
Like the time my grandmother
Surfaced from her dying bed

To join me in the story
Of the time my sister spilled
A whole milkshake down my shirt.

And just the other day, she,
My sister, your aunt, reached out
To me, since I’m dying now,

Recalling old anecdotes,
And that one came up, which she
Was too young to remember

Well, and that broke the ice.
What’s the point? I guess the point
Is that the arts don’t function

Best as what we think they are.
Stories, like singing, were balm,
Were human kinds of grooming,

Elaborating meaning
As a kind of offering,
Creating intimacy.

The grander social uses
Came later, for all the arts,
And that includes poetry.