how to appreciate poetry

It helps if your heart’s been broken at least three times. Get plowed over by dumb luck. Get drunk on moonlight. Or sunlight. Or gin. Watch a child try. And fail. Teach a house to suffer. Show an owl how to tie its shoes. Invent a language only you and your dog understand. Sharpen a thousand pencils; use the shavings to make new pencils. Hold the poem’s page to your ear & listen. The words are no more silent than the lungs of the dead.