The favored poets: Browning, Teasdale, Auden
Dickinson and Shakespeare, Sones, and Li.
and while the fire told me it was true
what stoked the coals of liking poetry?

Of nature, nurture, choice: it was not nature
I come from several cynic engineers
and while from nature my mind now sings music
no poems were explored in those young years.

But I don’t choose which nerves are set aflame
and melt out of compassion for those words,
or else that state would happen every time
I reached the next work in my syllabus.

What makes her like them? Maybe it’s because
her boyfriend left her world the night before.
The swirl of pain flowed out of the trapdoor
and made her brain susceptible to love.

Her eyes would flash, the key hormone would rise
and Whitman croon just the right qualities
to leave her re-seduced. But maybe not.
If anything else happened, she forgot.

Perhaps it was the recent phone call home,
a gentle teacher urging her to grow,
or snowflakes landing on her face like foam.
If I knew what, then I would let you know.