There are Many Ways to Stop a Poem

There are many ways
to stop a poem.

You can do it by studying the thing they call
Poetry.

You can shout it down
at meetings,
coopt it into committees,
shoo it away as if it were
a common jungle crow,
drop it down
the general well of cacophony.

The most popular method,
I believe,
is to explain it.

Yes, there are many ways
to stop a poem
in its tracks,
to break
the wingspan of its words.

Yet every now and then
a poem 
will pop -
a sudden mole from a mole hill
by the side of a road.
 
 

Published in Kavya Bharati, 2011, No.23