Why Poetry?

This week Chris Lehman asked the #TeacherPoets community to write short reflections on "Why Poetry?"  Here is my contribution to this conversation.

We have the language to say "I love you. I miss you."  But it often feels cliche.  It doesn't capture the depth of our feelings.  So we write something like...

78th Street

I am here
without you.
So I close my eyes,
breathe --
pretend you are
standing
right there.

I think it is the breath, the silence in poems that makes poetry more powerful than the words themselves.  And we need to have a means to say all that needs to be said, though we lack the language to convey it precisely.  So we have, thank goodness, poetry.