National Poetry Month/Spring Cleaning

Third Week, April 2008







A PLANT LADY’S LIFE IN GEEKATOPIA

Poem:
FIRST STOP

The congregation
assembles at the brown door
queuing for coffee -

double tall half-caff,
no foam, vanilla no room
Americano.

Beyond the window
cranes swing into position -
birth a new building.

Bare branches cradle
last year’s empty nests
filled with plum petals.

Off to work I rush -
Too quickly the cup is drained,
a calm moment lost.

Okay gang, no more Lord Byron for a while. Was that a sigh of relief? He is, I realize, an acquired taste - like pickled herring or artichokes. Actually, I am also a big fan of pickled herring and artichokes, though not on the same plate, nor at every meal.

That being said, I am still blithering on about poetry because April is National Poetry Month and I mark it by writing a few poems, reading a few poems - though sometimes I doubt that there is any real point to poetry anymore. Does it serve much of a purpose in the day to day mechanics of Twenty-first Century life? Nope. We poor bewildered poets are curios of a bygone age, the literary equivalent of button hooks and buggy whips.

I think that for most people poetry is a confusing anachronism - not worth the effort it takes to ferret out meaning or value. We poets have gone from being Percy B. Shelley’s “unacknowledged legislators of the world” to just plain unacknowledged (except for during Poetry Month of course). I’ll bet there are more people who crochet pot holders than write or read poetry. I could be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. Not that there’s anything wrong with pot holders! The world needs pot holders too.

Who knows what wacky weed Shelley was smoking when he envisioned poets as legislators of the world - though poets couldn’t possibly do worse than career politicians. Can’t you just picture the President in the coat closet penning a poem (as opposed to pinning a page). Still, Shelley had a point, given that poetry was the Hip-Hop of his era. As we all have seen, popular media has enormous power to swing opinion and morph policy. Just look at the influence of The Daily Show and the Colbert Report on this year’s presidential campaign! Especially in the under 30 demographic (Come to think of it, Shelley was under 30. Hmm).

OFFICE PLANT CARE TIP:

Spring cleaning time! Last week I talked about the importance of keeping your plants clean but neglected to mention “doing the dishes” - cleaning the pots and saucers. Mold, mildew, insects, and just plain filth hide in all the little ceramic crevices. What does is profit you to have a clean palm plant if there are voracious mealy bugs hiding in the saucer waiting to spring when your back is turned? But for pete’s sake don’t clean just once a year when the gunk is so thick you can write your name in it - a routine once-over with one of those disinfectant wipes is really all your pots need to stay bug/crud free and sparkling bright.