1060. This Is Not A Poem - Joyce Carol Oates

in which the poet discovers
delicate white-parched bones
of a small creature

on a Great Lake shore

or the desiccated remains

of cruder roadkill

beside the rushing highway.

Nor is it a poem in which

a cracked mirror yields

a startled face,

or sere grasses hissing

like consonants

in a foreign language.

Family photo album

filled with yearning

strangers long deceased,

closet of beautiful

clothes of the dead.

Attic trunk, stone well,

or metonymic moon

time-travelling for wisdom

in the Paleolithic

age, in the Middle Kingdom

or Genesis

or the time of Basho. . . . 

Instead it is a slew

of words in search

of a container 

a sleek green stalk,

a transparent lung,

a single hair's curl,

a cooing of vowels

like doves.