Speaking Plainly in Poetry

Sometimes speaking needs to be be done both plainly and in poetry. The essayist’s keyboard writes journalistically, but a poet’s pen tends to curve. It speaks truth aslant of literal meaning. It breaks into lines, cadges meaning from comparisons, and is known to divert utterance with entertaining rhythm or rhyme.

I’m thinking about saying a thing with curves, speaking plainly in poetry. Uttering my truth in metaphor while making its essentials clear as glass. To say my poems plainly while still saying it as poetry. I think of Naomi Shihab Nye, who has brilliantly perfected this plain-speaking poetry.

How does a poem occur?

The poem below burst into being one day. I didn’t recognize it as a poem. But after some rearrangement, synonyms, polishing, and additions, I decided to post it here as a blog post. What is the difference between a post and a poem? About two letters.

I plan on posting more poem-like things here, though doing so removes the top layer of my literary rights, the first North American Serial Right. Sometimes partnering with a zine or litmag is great. Today, I need to be speaking plainly in poetry. Under my own umbrella.

WHAT I KNOW

Today I celebrated five birthdays,
two weddings, an anniversary, and the birth
of puppies. Yesterday, a big party on an island
was my day’s highlight. All with
my feet on a footstool, bathrobe tucked,
fingers flying.

The plague has shrunk the world,
and wildfires often clog our lungs.
The cost of fuel keeps me staying home,
and yet my sphere has widened. I go flying
around the globe with the flick of a thumb,
video with a friend in the Rockies
or Honolulu, unmasked,
breathing my San Francisco salt air.

The high court has tried to harden
differences and distinctions, to divide
genders, races, classes, and behaviors,
but a tsunami of oneness is building.
This flood can’t be staunched by a seawall
of legislation. A drought of compassion
will soon be slaked

simply by our being together, sharing
global life, as I do with a Twitter friend in Kyiv
through her #warcoffee. Every minute
our essential truth becomes clear
in the lenses of my virtual eye:
we have never been more One than we are today.

The dark clouds gathered here
are splitting like the Red Sea before Moses.
A rain of new awareness dazzles the heart
that we share. One heart, one family
of humans. It comes pouring down faster
now, through the connections,
awakening in the newest generations.

Rachel Dacus
7-27-22

You can read more of my poetry in my poetry collections. The most recent is Arabesque.