Picture This
Picture That
for Shannetha L. Bostwick

a picture, it is said,
is worth a thousand words

what poetry can capture in a line
might require 500 words
otherwise to convey

a picture is not worth
a thousand words of poetry, certainly

consider what is conveyed
by William Carlos Williams
in these 16 words:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

even a book of poetry
without pictures
is for her as if empty

though she might have been joking
feigning being illiterate
or anti-intellectual

when she is indeed
intellectually sophisticated
quite intelligent

I must not fail to be able
to read irony
when encountered in life
in literature
or upon the stage

reading comes
in so many forms

an animal sniffs the earth
or the air and reads
a thousand things
in what it smells

so must a poet, an artist
so must we all


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2012
6:24 p.m. 30.08.12