Poets know what poems mean

even when they don’t know the meanings.

.

They read poems

like people reach for water.

.

We’re all just cats―

meeting

on the only street in town.

When a jet-red Cardinal flashes past my hammock

on a slow summer afternoon

I suddenly become

another step less

crazy than the moon.

Teach me the trust and love

that move behind your chocolate-brown eyes

like a deep southern river

.

and I’ll teach you

the secret of the doorknob

and give you many a doggy bone

.

―and everything I own.

Like a hippopotamus

dropping into a river

on a long hot afternoon

.

I find myself

stopping

to write this poem

.

and who’s to say I’m not

as deep, as cool, as home?