HOW WE BECOME THE POEMS
Sarah Browning
A poem can be a letter passing from the poet to my flashing computer screen to the cooperating copy machine on a Saturday morning so I may pass it – across banners and flags, over heads and strollers and backpacks – to waiting hands, hands hopeful for poems that build bridges instead of walls, for poems that leap walls, for poems that sing their way from here to there – my fear, her loneliness, your isolation, our anger – to what might be: to land, to picnics, to BBQ welcomes. A poem can ask for a hand, can offer a hand, can be a hand and a heart, a fishing line and a pole. We might call to one another in a poem. Ask for help with homework in a poem. Fall in love in a poem, fall into a poem. Wake up in a poem, stretch. Grow up in a poem. Find our full-throated selves in a poem. Become a poem. BROWNING ∫ 120