A Friend Said

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A friend said he doesn’t read
poetry because it is so hard
to understand. My friend is a
well-educated guy with a well-
rounded education, a doctorate,
no less. I just read several
poems from the latest issue of
a poetry magazine and much to
my chagrin, I think I agree with
my well-educated friend and I
write poetry. My father once said,
“If you wish to be understood,
son, be understandable.” However,
my father was a quite prosaic,
plain-spoken kind of guy not
given to metaphors and similes
which I understand poets use to
help get critical points of truth
across in as much as people keep
saying that poets are the great
truth tellers. Of course, even
Jesus, who some would say was the
greatest truth teller ever, could
be a bit or a whole lot cryptic
depending on the situation, but
then again, Jesus was a pretty
plain-spoken kind of guy, kind
of like my father, so those who
have ears, let them hear or eyes,
let them see, or brains, let them
understand…or not. And right now
I’m wondering if this is very
understandable at all, like or
as or is….Maybe, I should have
finished that master’s degree in
communication theory.

1 thought on “A Friend Said”

  1. I really like this Bob, thanks … good poetry, like anything well written, gets the point across clearly … whimsically, perhaps, even teasingly, but clearly, nonetheless, in a way that leaves the reader pondering, wondering, thinking … with windows and doors flying open, or something like that. There’s nothing wrong with poetry pressing the boundaries of understanding, playing with words and ideas in unusual ways … yet I sometimes get the impression that only the writer understands what the writer is writing, and even that may be in doubt. Obfuscation is not profundity …

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