Ars Poetica in a Business Suit

To become a poet, I learned 
to manufacture the fog then 

fill it with happenstance. 
It was important for me 

to rummage every heart 
I encountered for the letter K 

I’d lost. This job, I thought, 
meant bringing the brake lights 

back to tender; airbrushing the river. 
The most beautiful season—if I’m 

doing the work—should be the one 
I’m in—burnt yellow 

and witnessed. Reader, there is 
no inner child. It’s you—as it has 

always been, ready now to allow 
the long stalk of a sunflower 

its astonishment. This life I get 
to answer to. My goodness. My 

daughter, yesterday, twirled 
a fallen leaf in her small hands,

called it a kite. Then it was my turn 
to make it fly. She pressed her hands 

to my face. Her fingers traced 
with the apple slices from earlier. 

I wanted to spend the rest 
of my life revising what I understood 

of the orchard. And so I did.