The Avid Reader Poem by RIC BASTASA

i guess, if she is true,
she will tell me, that i what i write
is a strange black bird
looking for a white home along
the olive green reeds
thriving on the mirror pond
wanting to be a bluish sky
not so blue
but a little shade of pale
embarrassed kid having taken
the bite of a cake
prohibited by mom,

sometimes i think
is she after my body or the body
of the poem?
my conceit again hovers
on the mountain tops
on cliffs
without trees

what i think is that
we all somehow want to be read
even if not understood
for what use is a poem or a word
when there is no one
alive in this
abandoned abalone
world?