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Helicopter Poet,a poem by Nancy Pulley


Helicopter Poet
by Nancy Pulley

I hover over creation, stroke
a metaphor as if brushing
the hair from my grandson’s forehead,
pull a poem back from the hot fire
of the critic as I did my son’s fingers
from our autumn campfire. I can’t bear
for the world to see them through any
except a mother’s eyes. How I cherish
the fact that they came from me, wonder
if I should trust others to love enough
to help with their raising. A teacher
suggests taking out the heart of one, and
a nearly famous poet calls them “sentimental.”
Yet try as I might to build poems
like bridges, I keep birthing them from
some romantic liaison with air, sky, tree,
river or the occasional star that falls
to earth like a God. Words are not
brightly colored Lego blocks
to be torn apart and repurposed. They cling
to me, my little monkeys, my sweet
offspring, daughters coming in from the yard,
peach juice glistening on their young, pink lips.

Nancy Pulley's poems have appeared in Tipton Poetry Journal, the Indiannual, Flying Island, Arts Indiana Literary Supplement, Passages North, Plainsong, the Sycamore Review, and the Humpback Barn Festival collection. In 1992, she won the Indiana Writers Center poetry chapbook contest, resulting in the publication of a chapbook, Tremolo of Light.