Invitation from a Poem

Often I enjoy reading poems that somehow invite the reader into them. Sometimes they do so merely by being accessible, but even difficult poems can signal, in a variety of ways, that the reader is still welcome. Many of Shakespeare's sonnets and Donne's poems belong, I'd argue, in the latter category. You know going in that there will be some knots to untie, but you also know you'll probably enjoy being inside the poem nonetheless. With some so-called L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poems, a few of Robert Creeley's poems, and a lot of Pound's poetry, I'm sometimes uncertain about how welcome I am in the poem.

Here's a poem that takes the idea of invitation both literally and figuratively:

Make Yourself, At Home

by Hans Ostrom

You are always welcome here
at the end of this sentence,
in a courtyard of expression.

Your presence shapes utterance,
organizes this garden of letters.
With your permission, afternoon

arrives. We could say “shadows
lengthen,” but that’s not very good,
and you prefer to think of Earth

always moving, pulling trees, people,
hills, and buildings toward and away
from sun. You are and change the subject.

You murmur a tale, which brings laughter
at its close. Will you tell that tale?
Please tell that tale again.

The invitation at the end is "spoken" by the one "uttering" the poem to an implied listener "within" the poem, but the invitation is also literal. The last stanza invites you to tell an engaging, perhaps humorous, tale or anecdote today to someone you know--or to a stranger, if the stranger will stand for it.

The poem is from Subjects Apprehended, by Hans Ostrom (Ohio: Pudding House Press, 2000).