for my friend, Betterdays, who has never written
a poem that did not seek, reach, or teach, even
when she thinks she knows not, the lesson plan below


wisdom arrives daily,
Even after you need all ten
fingers to count your
decades and generations

was it but last year
that a single gull cawing,
a solitary iris saluting the sundial,
a moment of watching her,
arms flung hither, encased in drowsy drops,
a mother and her child strolling,
she patrolling, and they, child world exploring,
only continents discovering,
a grandchild's freely given first kiss

would prompt a write as if a shotgun shell
had arrived not overnight, but instant implosion,
in a chest that could not contain emotion,
only seep, none to keep, skin to shed,
and of course,
tears of, what should I call them,
tears of more than life, tears of essence,
real tears come from invisibly indivisibly real places,
wiping me clean

and so I oathed, I swore,
the Supreme Court and the Village Clerk
jointly administered this vow,
my hand upon my heart,
where the words come from,

what ere you pro-prose,
what ere delights,
or havocs thy temperaments,
if to be,
duly noted, dispatched and possibly
shared,
let it be only thine best,
to the higher standard,
hold thyself close and closer still,
be happy to admit failure,
for that is excellence attained,
and when you are satisfied,
then we will be
but not mere satisfied too,
enthralled to you
for in they words,
you raise the sea level of this world's humanity,
higher and higher*

so, thank you
and thank yourself
this line drawn,
only at or above it,
the goods ones breathe...
the oxygen of poetry