What is a poem?

A poem is a grey man moulded from river clay. I’ve seen him shuffling out of a copse of alder trees, handless and bandaged, seeking some strange end unknown to him.

A poem is a flock of starlings that shatter from the wound, a black dove hurtling through a storm, a maypole in a tempest.

A poem is a ship made of sand that sails into the sky and honeyed starlight dripping from the heavens.

A poem has the eyes and ears of a raven.

A poem is a tree all wrapped in ivy

Used by fae-folk as a highway between this world and the others.

A poem has talons.

A poem rides on the padded paws of wolves.

A poem darkens midnight and lends its light to the dawn.

A poem is a moment of infinite curvature, a lens that peers back on itself whispering ’Holy, holy’.

A poem is time, a poem is life—a  lifetime of joy and grief, a journey’s end.

A poem is hunger, need.

A poem has fangs of lightning and blood that is the salt of the sea.

A poem is a thin, golden bridge spun from a spider’s silk, the scent of saffron and cinnamon, the singing of the seraphim

Who only say, ‘Holy, holy.’

A poem is a hymn that holds daylight and all the jungles of the Earth.

A poem is a gift, a river

Flowing right out of the wound.

A poem is a silver coin, tossed to Earth by the Lord of Dreams.

I picked it up in my driveway one day when I was a child.

I dusted it off and now I carry it around in my pocket.