Poetry Reading
When I reach the podium
all I want to be is this poem.
I don’t want to be a man standing here
reading this. Not even a brilliant man.
Not even a genius. I just want to be
these words in your ears. I want to
be sound, plunging down your auditory canal
into the damp expanse of your mind,
over the reef of your brain where the sea turtles
and angelfish are flapping their happy fins,
stirring sand to the surface. I want to be
that sand and that sea and the words that
make it happen. Because every heart
becomes an ocean, the moment it
starts to listen.
~Wolff Bowden
