A young man once told me
that to write poems
about poetry
is a foolish aim.

Hey, I said,
I can’t help it
if you won’t push
your limits.

The other day
I ripped a plywood plank in half
with a jigsaw.  I made a shelf
to hold books, and that was good;

but to deny that there was a pleasure
in the vibration from the tool, to deny that
there was suffering in the splinters that flew
from the cut, to deny that the books on the shelf are better

and more present for me because
I can tell you of the work I put into
keeping them safe, that would be
a lie.

You tell me to keep it to myself,
I say: if another person learns
to rip plywood in pursuit
of a better life, a life

that celebrates the chase
for meaning in every way,
I’m never going to stop
saying that it matters

how the pen hits the paper,
how the words receive their charges.
I’m never going to stop saying it.
You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to;

you don’t have to do anything at all
except tell your own stories of acting and
reacting.  There’s a reason I love the doing,
the craft: it reminds me

that work is the one thing
that separates me from
death, that keeps me aware
of how this flow

makes me human. It’s all
worth speaking of.
Everything is an act of poetry,
even the writing of a poem.