A
New Poet
by Linda Pastan
Finding a new poet
is
like finding a new wildflower
out
in the woods. You don't see
its
name in the flower books, and
nobody you tell believes
in
its odd color or the way
its
leaves grow in splayed rows
down
the whole length of the page. In fact
the
very page smells of spilled
red
wine and the mustiness of the sea
on a
foggy day—the odor of truth
and
of lying.
And
the words are so familiar,
so
strangely new, words
you
almost wrote yourself, if only
in
your dreams there had been a pencil
or a
pen or even a paintbrush,
if
only there had been a flower.
Linda Pastan, Heroes In Disguise
W.
W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Copyright © 1991 by Linda Pastan