The Four-Day Poetry Crisis Autumn 2015 Poem by Daniel Brick

To all my fellow poets at POEMHUNTER

This even is so rare in the scheme
of things it has no name peculiar
to itself. Bureaucracies, so eager
to gobble up revenue for any excuse,
failed to stumble upon this one. No
church or museum or university
had anticipated it. No news organization
got the scoop. Their representatives
stare at each other at follow-up sessions.
'But really, ' they say with no urgency
in their voices, 'how could we possibly
know these dribble-dabblers, these scribblers
without any media clout, these poets
in an age of prose and sense would count
for so much? Could it be as hoax? '

The alarm had been sounded the year before
when a joint commission of NASA scientists
and Mayo Clinic medical researchers announced
their findings: 'Just as the brain releases
chemicals which flood the individual with
positive feelings, so the imaginative interior
work of poets releases psychic energy beneficial
to humanity and nature... We are as surprised
as you with our conclusions... But there's
more: Our calculations indicate a short-fall of
thirty poets to adequately produce these benefits.'
TV footage showed some of the specialists laughing,
but by Day Two of the crisis no one was laughing.

The US government's impact paper was leaked to
the confused public. The San Andreas fault had
widened, Blue Whales were suddenly singing their
symphony in minor key, Monarch butterflies could
not find Mexico: they were trapped circling malls
in southern Texas, traffic was stalled for miles
even in small towns, a greasy rain stained people
and buildings across New England, in Minnesota
the Mississippi was turned into stationary sludge.
And the good will between people around the globe
dissolved into recriminations and threats....

On the Third Day, Robert Bly came out of his
retirement, and at age 90 began a marathon reading
of poems. People crowded into the Landmark Center
in St. Paul for the relief which flowed forth
from his presence as he recited his own poems
and his translations of this News of the Universe.
The listeners sighed with delight as the words of
Neruda and Lorca, Rilke and Trakl, Transtromer
and Ekelof permeated the air they breathed. When
Bly read THE NIGHT ABRAHAM CALLED TO THE STARS,
they felt a huge weight lift from their spirits.
He read it a second time, and the weight became
the grace of being. In later days, people said
Robert Bly's reading was the Battle of Thermopylae
in this crisis. When he left the stage on the Fourth
Day, two hundred poets and readers of poetry formed
a line of volunteers to continue the work he had begun.

On the fifth day The Mississippi River flowed slowly
and majestically below its high banks. Cool, clear
rain cleansed New England, traffic flowed once again,
and the Monarchs reached their home in northern Mexico.
Pundits began to dissect the crisis into many unrelated
events, and the laughter over poetry in an age of prose
resumed... But in a small town anywhere in this immense
world, a twelve year girl completed to her satisfaction
her first ever poem. The opening line read, 'We are
beginning to read the message dawn delivers: Keep your promises.'