A poem can make you pause; a poem can make you laugh, or cry;  a poem can encourage you loudly or brightly – or ever so quietly – to seize the day.  I love this one by Arne Weingart

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Jarvis Crocker Says Dance for Me Tonight

At the top of the two hundred eighty-two stairs
from which point you can take in
the particulars of the river and its basin
at a minor remove and the best view of
the two hundred eighty-two stairs
there is a wooden railing protecting climbers from
becoming one with the scenery into which is carved
Dance for me tonight
Signed Jarvis Crocker
and a drawing of her face she has straight hair
a longish nose she is not smiling but she is not yet
angry thinking perhaps about whether to grant
this wish I say do it for God’s sake dance for him
in a way that he can not possibly have imagined because
there are not many men who will finally tell you
exactly what they want and fewer still
who will carve it in wood at the top of a place
open to the public and not easily reached

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Arne Weingart will be reading from his award-winning poetry collection, Levitation for Agnostics, on Monday, February 22nd, at 6:30 p.m., at Parnassus Books.  Please join me in welcoming him back home to Nashville for a visit!

 

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