Outside My Window: An Apologia (Of Sorts) Poem by Frank Avon

They say -
or so I heard -
that Mary Oliver belongs to an
'I-looked-out-my-window-and-had-a-revelation'
School of Poetry.
Maybe.

Not me.
I belong to no School of Poetry,
not even a kindergarten,
certainly not an
'I-looked-out-my-window-and-had-a-revelation'
school (room) .

But what
I often do is
look outside my window when I first arise in the morning
and write what's there
for me.

I do,
and what I see when I look outside my window
speaks to my soul
for I do belong to a School you might call
'I-have-a-soul-and-it's-the-only-real-part-
of-me, '

which means
I swim upstream
in whatever creek I find myself, with all the other minnows,
refreshing myself as through a glass brightly,
gazing through the panes of my bay
window

and write
what I (I would have said envision,
except somebody might think I was classing myself
with William Blake who,
by the time he was four, was seeing angels outside his window)
see there.