Reading a poem aloud with your friends,
along with your eggs and coffee, is like eating
toast made with good bread—your mouth
loving the rich, whole-grain words that
spill over the poem’s lip and into the air.
You may also drink language, the sounds
of voices swirling within your coffee cup,
the poet in your brain relishing the bite
of syllables. You taste them with your
insatiable tongue until the words leap into
their places in the line. Surprising, slippery,
agile, the mental images dissolve within you,
becoming your diet. Ultimately, you may
find that you, yourself, are the poem you
continue to invent from the colors of living.
