Helicopter
Poet
by
Nancy Pulley
I
hover over creation, stroke
a
metaphor as if brushing
the
hair from my grandson’s forehead,
pull
a poem back from the hot fire
of
the critic as I did my son’s fingers
from
our autumn campfire. I can’t bear
for
the world to see them through any
except
a mother’s eyes. How I cherish
the
fact that they came from me, wonder
if
I should trust others to love enough
to
help with their raising. A teacher
suggests
taking out the heart of one, and
a
nearly famous poet calls them “sentimental.”
Yet
try as I might to build poems
like
bridges, I keep birthing them from
some
romantic liaison with air, sky, tree,
river
or the occasional star that falls
to
earth like a God. Words are not
brightly
colored Lego blocks
to
be torn apart and repurposed. They cling
to
me, my little monkeys, my sweet
offspring,
daughters coming in from the yard,
peach
juice glistening on their young, pink lips.
Nancy
Pulley's
poems have appeared in Tipton Poetry Journal, the Indiannual, Flying
Island, Arts Indiana Literary Supplement, Passages North, Plainsong,
the Sycamore Review, and the Humpback Barn Festival collection. In
1992, she won the Indiana Writers Center poetry chapbook contest,
resulting in the publication of a chapbook, Tremolo of Light.