Price of Poems

Have you seen the cost of poems

lately?  They are going for six to 

seven times what they did in the

mid to late eighties.  Not that the 

poets are making any more.  But,

you'll not find one listed under

ten solid, sensual remembrances;

the kind where you close your 

eyes and drift off to the smell of her 

skin, or the rain on hot macadam,

or the butter and brown-sugared

sweetness of that fresh baked apple 

pie.  Some go for as much as thirty

orange and purpling-pink sunsets,

with the constant chatter of nut

hatches and chipmonks rising into

the trees from the rich, dank aroma 

rising off the forest floor of humus.  

Why, I saw one just today that

was "marked-down" to the astronomical

price of forty shooting stars, three

arora boreali, and one full blue-moon

hanging lazily over the sloshing fetch

of the river of your own choosing.  

When I sit down and figure how much 

goes into a poem, I guess they are

worth it.  Just, imagine the infintessimal 

number of encounters the poets have 

had to corral into the poetic caves nestled 

somewhere in their poetic hearts so they 

might match those to a handful of words 

spewing out of some infinitessimal galaxies 

of word they have known, and witnessed,

 and have been leaing into collecting since 

from before were they were even born.  

I mean, that's a lot.  I guess it just caught 

me a little bit off guard.