“Twelve Stanza Program”

“…man is the measure of all things…” —Protagorus

First, just under the title, I will place the correct
Quotation, book-ended with ellipsis, so my readers
Are certain I’ve read the Greeks before they begin

To watch me parade my first person as it conspicuously
Eats, takes walks, reads some haiku, contemplates
Bridges, has the occasional nightcap with Charles Mingus.

I will read the biography of a poet or a painter and later
Place Shelley in a discothèque, Vermeer watching
Reality Television, then sit back and watch the poems

Dance about the room, drunk on anachronism. I will
Gaze out any number of windows and chronicle
The movements of even those animals I don’t see,

After which I’ll peruse a book on orchids for hours
(Any ethos worth its salt is fluent in the language
Of flowers). A lost love will appear periodically

With a possibility in her proverbial pocket and a head
Full of obligatory hair that massages memory.
Even the moon isn’t off limits to a first person like me.

I, for one, have seen it for the first time again and again
And, in order to round out this troublesome stanza,
I’ll presume your passion for snow, the topography

Of clouds, rivulets, antique bridges, and field mice.
Mind, your knowledge of jazz must be as prodigious
As mine, and you must let me decide what it means

To quit smoking, to truly appreciate Pound, turn 50,
And above all you need to accept my mornings’ lyrical
Minutiae, riddled with birdsong, coffee cups, and allusion.

You will slowly become convinced, when my artifice
Permits, that everything you’ve ever done, said, forgotten,
Or read had a poem in it you simply didn’t notice. Your

Life, albeit full, has been too full of formless, almost
Moments that should have ended with action, with
Someone weeping or waving their way to becoming.

Your felt experience, like your participles, precariously
Dangling, perhaps preceded by the perfect adverb. Listen.
It’s your lyrical, newly vertical life, passably singing.

–by Erik Campbell
found in Arguments for Stillness. Curbstone Press, 2006