Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like
a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light
switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving
at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and
torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really
means.
