What is Poetry

Winnie asked this of us, and I am hard put to attempt anything as grand and perceptive as her posted poem. Yet I am drawn to ponder the old question, "Is it the singer or the song?" I would wish to say that as I am a poet, everything I write is poetry -- and cannot be else. Thus I need help here from my friends to decide not only what poetry is, but what makes a poet -- and more profoundly, why many seen driven to write. Up until about five years ago I hardly wrote a thing outside of business stuff. Now, hardly a day passes without writing several poems, stories, reflections. Am I gifted or cursed? I am certainly possessed.

The other day, due to miscommunication and wrong information from the bus company, Em wound up waiting for hours to be picked up, while I talked to the grass at another location. My concern was not nearly as deep as hers -- fearing that something terrible must have happened to me. Later -- safely home, she sat beside me and asked me to write something for her. She says I can share it. I wrote this, just as is without editing. This is the way I think -- the way I speak -- the way it 'flows through me'. Poetry, I don't know -- life, yes!

faucon

My pulse is perhaps slowed a bit
with the touching of your sadness -
and I extend out and within
as of want and call of being;
for there is a tremble in your presence
of which we are not aware in fullness -
from the newness and the nearness of it all.

The melody of your playing
need not shift to minor key -
nor fear that fine strings are broken
on the lyre of our togetherness;
for what you sense
is the breath of lonely
whispering in a duet of longing -
of which you have never been blessed before.

By chance and error of assumption
you were to fear I'd come to harm -
and in an instant of panic
reality set in and down;
for the life we assemble is fragile
and puts us both at risk of fame and fortune -
for of we there must be us or all is mem'ries.

Welcome to true humanity
and the oft bitter sweet passion
that mere mortals embrace in love
that angels may fly divinely;
and know the trembling of my heart and soul
when you are late, gone or choose to walk alone
and I too am skert of being with none but self.

But being two
is what it is
all about,
of course...

and I am here right now.