Jane Kenyon Under My Bed

By which I don’t mean to start talking about
how hard it is for me to talk about poetry;
how when I tell you what books I’ve read this month
I’m not going to name poetry books
because
books are not a unit of poetry.

And I’m not going to tell you how when I was in college,
broke, money just enough for rent, gas, cigarettes,
I determined the only books to buy, keep, savor,
invest in
were poetry and philosophy
being not reliant–you must hear youthful scorn here–
on mère plot.

I don’t know a lot of things now
I knew for sure at nineteen and twenty.
But this morning reaching for a shoe I instead grabbed
Jane Kenyon’s Collected Poems
that had been set down just under the edge of my bed
when it had accompanied me towards falling asleep
the other night.

And I won’t undervalue a good plot, after all,
either as distraction from
or survival manual for the painful things in life;
and still, some nights, what you really need is
accompaniment.