Sometimes farm granaries become especially beautiful when all the oats or
wheat are gone, and wind has swept the rough floor clean. Standing inside,
we see around us, coming in through the cracks between shrunken wall boards,
bands or strips of sunlight. So in a poem about imprisonment, one sees a
little light.
But how many birds have died trapped in these granaries. The bird,
seeing freedom in the light, flutters up the walls and falls back again and
again. The way out is where the rats enter and leave; but the rat's hole is
low to the floor. Writers, be careful then by showing the sunlight on the
walls not to promise the anxious and panicky blackbirds a way out!
I say to the reader, beware. Readers who love poems of light may sit
hunched in the corner with nothing in their gizzards for four days, light
failing, the eyes glazed. . .
They may end as a mound of feathers and a skull on the open boardwood
floor. . .
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The Prose Poem