Rejoicing In My Poetic Powers Of Observation

I am reading Watership Down.
It is a story of exile and despair.
It is a story about rabbits.
Once upon a time
I raised rabbits
for their meat.
I saw and felt
their fear
as I raised my hammer
for the killing blow.
And, despite my
poetic powers of observation,
my ability to feel
the terror,
and the pain,
and the suffering
I inflicted,
still I continued
breaking their skulls
long into late fall.

My poetic powers of observation,
which I presume
all poets possess
to a cetain degree,
rests in my ability to
see beneath the
surface of things.
For instance,
yesterday’s arrival of
a Montgomery Ward catalogue
screamed,
BUY NOW PAY LATER.
Because I possess
the faculty of poetic insight,
I could read between the lines and,
like the parting of the mist to
reveal the New Jerusalem,
I perceived that
now I can buy some
outdoor power equipment
that I have no use for.

This, I say, is
the true power of poetry.
This is the power of poetic insight.
Bring on the rabbits.
Bring on the Indians.
Bring on the angst.

This not the best of poems,
nor is it the worst.
It’s just another poem
swimming in a sea of words
as they exit the crosstown bus
into the bosom of my soul.
I cut them
and shape them
to suit my fancy.
I am scissor man.

You and I are not going to write
a collection of radiantly brilliant poems.
But the ones we do write,
the ones which stand the test of time,
those that touch us in a private, loving, and hurtful place,
therein lies our heaven.