The Six-Day Poetry Crisis Poem by Daniel Brick

The Event is so rare in the scheme
of Things, it has no name peculiar
to itself. Bureaucracies, so eager
to gobble up revenue for any excuse,
failed to detect this one. No church
or museum or university anticipated it.
No news organization got the scoop.
Their representatives stare at each other
in follow-up sessions, and then they all
talk at once. It's that kind of situation.
When a nervous silence ensues, a dishelved
offical says, "How could we possibly know
dribble-dabblers, these scribblers
without any media clout, these poets
in an Age of Prose and Sense would count
so highly? Could it be a hoax? Of course."

The alarm had been sounded the year before
when a joint commission of NASA scientists
and Mayo Clinic researchers announced
their findings: "Just as the brain releases
chemicals which flood the individual's conscious-
ness with positive feelings, so the interior work
of poets releases psychic energy beneficial
to humanity and nature." The spokesperson almost
almst choked, he wiped his brow: "We are as surprised
as you with our, um, unanimous conclusions... But,
there's more. Our calculations indicate a short-fall
of some, ah, forty-five poets to adequately produce
these benefits."TV coverage showed some of
the specialists laughing, but by Day Three of the crisis,
no one was laughing.

The United States government Impact Paper was leaked
to the confused public. The San Andreas Fault had
widened, Blue Whales suddenly were singing their
symphony in minor key, Monarch butterflies
could not find Mexico. They were trapped,
circlig malls in central Texas, traffic was stalled
for miles, even in small towns, a greasy rain
stained people and buildings across New England,
in southern Minnesota the mighty Mississippi River
was turned into stationary sludge. And Good Will
among people around the globe degenerated into
scorn and threats. People's faces either showed
alarm or absolutely nothing at all.

On the Fourth Day, Robert Bly came out of
his retirement, and at age 90 began a marathon
reading of poems. People crowded into the Landmark
Center in St. Paul for the relief which flowed forth
from his mighty presence as he read his own poems
and his translations of what he called "News of the
Universe." The listeners sighed in delight at the words of
Neruda and Lorca, Rilke and Ahkmatova, Transtromer
and Levertov permeated the air they breathed.
When Robert Bly read "The Night Abraham Called to the Stars, "
they felt a huge weight lift from their spirits.
He read it a second time and the weight dissolved
into the grace of being. In later days, people said
Robert Bly's reading was the Battle of Thermopylae
in this crisis. When he left the stage on the Fifth Day,
two hundred poets and readers of poetry formed
a line of volunteers to continue the work he began.

On the Seventh Day, the Mississippi River flowed slowly and majestically below its high banks in the Twin Cities area.
Cool, clear rain cleansed New Enfland, traffic raced the highways once again, and the Monarchs reached their and began their
annual reign. Pundits began to dissect the crisis
into many unrelated events, and the laughter over poetry
in an age of prose resumed... But in a small town
anywhere or everwhere in the world, a twelve-year old girl completed to her satisfaction her first ever poem. The opening line read,
"We are beginning to read the message each dawn delivers
to our waking minds: Keep your promises, people of the sweet Earth."