Your Reader (In Response To Billy Collin's 'reader') Poem by Suzanne Hayasaki

Today your reader sits

Enthroned on an Ikea sofa

Wrapped in a crazy quilt

Listening to a mystery in Japanese

Sifting its way from the kitchen

As my husband chops bok choy

For what you might call pot stickers.



My kindle has been put aside

My iPhone taken up

To pluck at letters at the bottom of the screen.

Poetry without paper.



What would Li Bai say?

Where is the grace of brush

Dancing on the face of paper?

Where is the pathos of flower petals

Drifting into inkstone?



Is it still art if it can be created

On a whim, without a departing friend

Or a seasonal theme

Or a rhyme scheme?



I like to think it can

For the simple reason

That poetry predates paper

And pedantry.



Poetry is as human as music

And flows from all of us

In similes and linguistic melodies.

If we choose to,

We can set quotidian moments

In a framework of words

That pull things into focus

That would otherwise go unnoticed

And remind us that art can made

Of nothing but thought.