A Poet Looking At Wheat

The mountain did not symbolize grief.
It was a large rock. That's all it had the qualifications for.

The river didn't "represent"
the passage of youth. It was mostly carrying shopping bags
and a dead fish downstream.

People keep standing in fields,
acting like wheat is trying to teach them patience.
No. Wheat is just outside.

The moon does not care
that you are healing.
The rain is not crying with you.

A crow landing on your fence
is not a bad omen.
(Well, maybe this one might be true.)

But —
sometimes things are just things.

Poetry was never about what things are,
just what people can't help seeing in them.