September 07, 2023
Nightingale Mode
by Jonathan Katz
Do I wake or sleep?
--- John Keats
I have quantified and abstracted everything
that could be measured.
I thought defining poetry would not be difficult
once prose was defined
but it seems that the universe
has not been troweled out
identically everywhere.
Some lines can rhyme and not be poetic
and others that don’t rhyme can sing.
And while most of the animal kingdom
sift liquids, reek and repel us,
the nightingale ecstatically overcomes
with its lyric composed of rattles, chucks and whistles,
and pours forth its soul,
its mesmerizing music muddling our slumber and waking,
our dreamed dramas and imaginary landscapes.
There are, I have discovered,
many ways a self can be divided,
many ways words tintinnabulate and toll.
How to know the meaning of my monarchy:
am I a machine hypothetically trying on butterfly wings
or a flutterer fancying digital precision?
Am I drifting afloat in sleep mode or arisen and on task?