POEMS HEADING SOUTH

Our poems are plucked from the sky
as, in flocks of thousands,
ideas pass overhead.

Sometimes we misfire
or shoot down only a few dead leaves,
often bring home a wooden sentiment,

having mistaken for the real thing
one of our own decoys.

[Note: "Decoy" implies that the "wooden sentiment" that alloys much art is something the artist himself puts out, hoping to fool some real feeling into coming within reach. I think we all do that, as the artists composing our own lives. For example, we may labor at being maudlin or ecstatic or angry in hopes of more passionate lives. Thus we may become infatuated with our own decoys. One reason the blaze of passion is sometimes considered brutal is that in its light, the dullness of our various pretensions to passion is exposed. Or the dullness of our poems.

When shooting at birds, a hunter may bring down a few leaves from the branches just above. Or dead leaves could be dead pages ("leaves" of books), dead poems. Seems appropriate that the hunters shoot from a "blind."]
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Dean Blehert
Blogs:
http://deanotations.blogspot.com (short poems)
http://dearreader08.blogspot.com (essays and longer poems)
New book (Deanotations, Volume 1) available at http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/deanotations-volume-one/4649669
WWW.BLEHERT.COM