Wheat, Words & the Birds

Five Ways to Read a Poem:

1. Read it like sweet honey is seeping out

of the poem, and you can hear the bees

buzzing inside the words.

2. Give the poem to a rain cloud and read

it when it comes down to Earth again as

little wet droplets.

3. Read the poem as if it’s grown wings

and can fly away any second, without

reading quickly or rushed.

4. Let a tree’s roots grasp at the words of

the poem and break each poetic particle

down so it becomes part of the tree. Read

the poem in the process.

5. Leave the poem somewhere far from

the city, in a place only you will know

how to find. Come back 5000 years later,

once the poem has fossilized, and read it

again.