Longfellow

I’m not a big guy on poetry because honestly I don’t understand much of it.
The works of Platt, Frost, Whitman and Yeats and many more leave me innocently frozen in my somewhat plebeian understanding of a language I actually speak.
Although I admire these artists for their incredibly complex ideas and manipulations of the English language, I fail miserably with interpretation.
But now and then something strikes me in such a way that I understand.
The words of Charles Coe, a poet, singer, activist and tireless supporter of the arts spoke to me today.
He’s a Boston legend and I can only hope that someday I can actually shake the man’s hand and say, “I am with you brother.”
This is a closing stance to of one of his poems called “Possiblity.”

The new snow covers everything.
It covers dogshit and cigarette butts.
It covers used condoms and losing lottery tickets
and under this impossibly blue sky
on what seems to be the very first morning of the world
the city is an old whore in a white wedding dress
clutching, like a fistful of flowers,
the idea that in spite of everything
we know to be true
about the world and ourselves
we might. somehow,
begin again

I don’t even care that they say he’s an all-around wiseass.
I love the way the guy thinks…
How about you?
~m