the extravagance of the common truth

 poetic license?

I have never believed in “poetic license,”

for that “get-out-of-jail-free” card

seems to me to be a way to cheat,

to let fancy replace honesty,

I write of a bluebird nest,

full of beauty, and hope,

and a black snake intrudes

with its different beauty and hope,

and death for the baby bluebirds,

I have to change my poem,

I have to deny a license to let me fudge the truth,

I write of a cache of indigenous artifacts

heralded by a perfect spearpoint and broken spearpoints,

all from 8-9000+ years ago,

so I wrote of an early human here

in a golden age in a golden moment,

then I find a chunky stone and piece of pottery

in that same collection,

maybe 1000 years ago, two ages separated inexplicably,

till I imagine myself in that closer time

and that person finding treasures from far earlier

and joining their past to their present,

I could have used “poetic license’

and denied the conflict of dating,

how much deeper and truer my poem is 

by including and not denying,

for me the license I feel in poetry

is to risk simile and metaphor

so that I can deepen and expand the truth revealed,

so as to hold the elusive

that seeks to hide in the common, in the mundane,

I look for the diamonds that are there

even in the rough that can seem to laugh at our presumption,

the license a poet should feel and use

is to risk the extraordinary and the extravagant

to better reveal the common truth

that can use some help to be seen,

the diamonds are there,

though they can hide themselves well.

by Henry H. Walker

March 13, ‘21