the poet sees the thing you cannot name

Her language mimics yours, but it isn’t the same.
Sounds are softer, longer, rhythmic.
You carry the world around in pieces and snapshots,
She sees it all at once in blurs, and that is enough.

Those strange scenes you dream?
Visions of unsolved mysteries,
The dancing bliss, the envy that you’re too frightened to speak,
She knows them and recalls them
And long after you’ve given up and left your haze,
She’s painting them stark and perfect
On sidewalks in yellow and gray, in the shade
Of maple trees, in permanent ink.

Her world spins in blues and dark magenta,
A little deeper than you’d like to believe,
Thick like summer air before a storm.
A little rough around the edges, but serene.
The dewdrops linger for a longer while,
And you might not notice the smile in the sun but she does.

An image, a thought—each iridescent strand of rain, each echo of tears that no one else hears—
The song in the chirp of the cricket, solitary but alive—
Tries to elude us.
But the poet knows it when she sees it,
Through her stained glass crystal window
While you’re stuck at the door.

You wake in the night and shove your nightmares away;
The poet wraps herself in a blanket of pure sense
She wakes and pens the language of dreams.

-Allison Chopin