Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way

or walk inside the poem's room

and feel the walls for a light switch

I want them to water-ski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author's name on the shore

but all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and tortre confession out of it

they begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

- Billy Collins

crest the wave