School of Poetry

School of Poetry

I was going to start a School of Poetry,
but I couldn't find a building to lease, nor
could I gather a group of destined geniuses.
A group? Not even one foreordainedly
acclaimed scribbler. So on I rode upon

a rickety nag of my own, notebooks piling
up somewhere like a slate-castle, my wee
career in poetry careening out where the
brush grows and the tourist throws an
empty bottle of beer.  I am I think

a member of a species the birders like
to call accidental. Thank God I never
started a School of Poetry. I would have
been tardy every day and distracted by
the cheerleaders for the football team,

on which I would have played free
safety, a roaming loner in search of
a concussion, scribbling dreams
between the yard-lines while ghosts
dissolved in Alka-Seltzer mists
beyond the stadium.


Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom