The Month I Appreciate Poetry

As I believe I blogged last April (maybe) this month is National Poetry Month and for thirty days Random House sends me a daily poem.
I like this because if I went off in search of poetry myself I'm not sure that I'd find the good stuff. Instead, I'd probably find the obtuse, medieval, thirty-stanza stuff that seems faraway and unintelligible.
But this poem shows me that poetry can also be casual, loving and like it maybe aptly should be, a shorthand of life:

Bearhug
by Michael Ondaatje

Griffin calls to come and kiss him goodnight
I yell ok. Finish something I'm doing,
then something else, walk slowly round
the corner to my son's room.
He is standing arms outstretched
waiting for a bearhug. Grinning.

Why do I give my emotion an animal's name,
give it that dark squeeze of death?
This is the hug which collects
all his small bones and his warm neck against me.
The thin tough body under the pyjamas
locks me like a magnet of blood.

How long was he standing there
like that, before I came?


Maybe this is what that Barnes & Noble gift card I got for Christmas has been waiting for.