reading poetry is hard!

reading poetry is hard! work,
you know? pushing your eyes over
and through lines, especially
with your mind
occupied trying
to find
the right rhythm and sound,
from among who knows how

many possible options, what
with the free-form structures
poets seem to prefer these days. (And
so do we! Readers, frankly - who needs
the old 'sing-song' shit?) but

it's still hard work, no matter
how beautiful we can tell the words
are. Our eyes push
into and through
and over syllables, line breaks, meter that seems
to bounce one way, then caroms off an extra
stress and rolls free,

we run back to catch up with it. And pick it up,
wondering

(and no, I am not demonstrating what I mean
within the flow as I go. Please. Trifling,
trifling tricks - beneath us both) well.

there's one way to make it easy, though:
read it out loud. Give the beauty of the words
a chance to make out with the love of your own
voice (You know you do.) and give the sense
of the words a chance to be read: only one way,
as you read it through. As naturally as you can manage!
it - words can be read, as if they were not a poem. Give
the poet a chance, to give you that. Give the poet a chance
to do a poet's job: to make the words tell. Read it out
loud,

give your mind a chance to
stop trying to figure things out.