The local is poetical,
Not the distant, or the far flung.
I don’t remember—and who cares—what I did when I was young.
That’s for the mawkish and the fictional to pretend—
The built up beginning for the manufactured end.
As if details from one’s youth
Were truly remembered. Childhood isn’t truth.
Ask the child. Oh you can’t. Tragedy, then? Or spoof?
Humpty Dumpty is daddy’s? And who fell from the roof?
The local is poetical. No use traveling distant seas
To where “dagger” is called something else, and there’s a different word for “please.”
Someone has already done that, and brought the sultan to his knees.
Tennyson was in love with “far away.”
Cliffs were foggy and many domains were gray.
But the Empire isn’t relevant today.
The local is poetical. I’m writing this to her
Who loves me, and lives a few inlets over,
And if she doesn’t love me—I plan to show her how.
The local is poetical. The poetical is the one I’m in love with now.