How do you express a feeling
How do you do it
Keats began with a cliche My heart aches
But then worked around to the sublime renunciation
Of Bacchus and his pards
Wherein it becomes rich to die

A woman’s place is in the home
Said the female teacher in the sixth grade classroom
Just as my mother was commencing her job
As a medical technologist at the big public hospital
I can’t even name much less express the feeling
Occasioned by that contradiction

The words for feelings couldn’t be less helpful
Did sixth grade make me sad
Resentful
Indignant
Afraid
And now the pissed-off boredom of adulthood

Wordsworth was a liar like everybody else
Emotion recollected in tranquility
Ha
Maybe tranquility was readily available
In the late-eighteenth early-nineteenth century
For traitors to love family country and philosophy

I’m not asking nor can I ask
The right question
There’s more to it than a technical process
Not that I have applied myself even to the technical process
Poetry and truth are distinct and diverse
And what is that something more