Introduction to poetry

Introduction to poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

Or press an ear against its hive

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out

Or walk inside a poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is to tie the poem to a chair with  rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
-Billy Collins