The Poet’s First Lesson

The first thing
is to never let them know
you can see into their soul.

Friends. Families. Lovers.
They do not trust their hearts
to anyone.

They dress them up.
They hide them away.
They protect them, no matter what,

and
the possibility of being seen,
naked,

vulnerable. their fears and eternal childhood
unmasked?

No, said the teacher.
Never let them know.
Let them think it is your heart you reveal,

not theirs,
and they will love you for
the very thing

they fear,
and you will hide your own childish fears
in plain view,

a fiction
more true than truth, and so,
unbelievable.

About the poem

Inspired by the picture (Taken in nearby Hebron, NY). When I saw the picture on a large monitor, I thought to myself that the blue was an impossible blue. And from that, my mind wandered, for weeks, around the idea of what we show and don’t show, and how, often when we gather the courage to reveal the truth about ourselves, no one believes it.

It makes me laugh, in a very Jack Nicholson, not quite sane, way.

Tom