Poems on Facebook

When you’re a writer, often you
are or think you are the songbird
in the corner, blue-frilled, and
no one is listening. Or maybe
everyone is listening.

The sad thing about knowledge is that
we have no tracking device for it,
no science to grasp it. I meet a lady.
She says she is a fan of my poems.
I nod, thank you. There is no residue
of my poems on her clothes, no hint of
my poems in her voice,

not because they are not there. When you’re
a writer, sometimes you wish each
read cost 38 cents so you can
at least know, and sometimes you really
don’t want to know.

When the songbird stops singing
because it is afraid no mate will come,
no mate comes. Sing loudly and badly,
with me, in the shower, on your pages.
If your melody deserves to be heard,
believe me,
someone out there is listening.