To a Young Poet
/Max Roland Ekstrom
Hack Demeter’s tree,
steal the club from Hercules,
pluck Augustine’s pear—
can you speak now?
For it is no office to tell the truth,
only humiliation to diddle with words,
to play at legislating the soul—
your self-made prayer,
your half-baked manna,
your upside-down thunderbolt.
To wait to be blessed is no blast.
Glory to yourself!
Hurry off to understand
the old language while we are young
and coerce lightning in a bottle.
Still your poem will leak
like a punctured pail of sand.
Author’s Note: This is the poem I wasn’t supposed to write as an early-career poet. Any of the advice I offer has likely been said, and said better, by others. But I needed a little carpe diem in my life—a little Thomas Merton, a little Edna St. Vincent Millay, and a lot of Mahmoud Darwish. So please, steal this poem, and make your life your greatest experiment.
Max Roland Ekstrom holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. His poetry appears in such journals as The Hollins Critic, Illuminations, and Confrontation. Max lives in Vermont with his spouse and three children.
