“Early poetry finds its stories and then finds ways of remembering them.” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 8
“Helen Hunt Jackson once commissioned Emily Dickinson to write her a poem about an oriole . . . Dickinson responded with ‘The Hummingbird’.” ~ https://somethingrhymed.com/2014/05/01/emily-dickinson-and-helen-hunt-jackson/
A poem flops about, uncertain where
To go. It’s like a fish that wants to walk
Or wants to grow six wings and fly. A pair
Won’t be enough. Verse doesn’t want to talk.
It wants to soar or dive to depths unknown
Until its bathysphere contraption came
To light. And then the poem hears a groan
Inside a story, something far from tame,
That needs to be immortalized. A god
Wants someone to create him in a crime
Of freedom. Poetry becomes the pod
For life support to nourish him in time.
A poem needs to do more than fulfill.
It wants to be the hummingbird’s bright chill.
