Inauguration Poetry

I was eating steak and mashed potatoes while I watched the inauguration today. I watched from the office conference room with other coworkers, some working on their laptops and others, like myself, eating reheated leftovers.

We were serious in serious parts but sometimes we couldn't help but make comments and jokes about what was going on or a camera man's mistake or whatever. It was a good time and a good inauguration.

I was disappointed by the poem that was read, more so by the way it was read than the actual words themselves. The poem was lost in disjointed reading. It was sad, really, that an opportunity to get people who wouldn't read poetry to listen and it was wasted.

But for me, some good came of it, as I was under the misapprehension that the U.S. Poet Laureate was Dana Gioia. He is, in fact, NOT the U.S. Poet Laureate but the chairman of the NEA. Kay Ryan is the U.S. Poet Laureate and I'd never heard of her before.

I found this wonderful poem by her on the Library of Congress Website that I simply had to share:

Hide and Seek

It’s hard not
to jump out
instead of
waiting to be
found. It’s
hard to be
alone so long
and then hear
someone come
around. It’s
like some form
of skin’s developed
in the air
that, rather
than have torn,
you tear.

Isn't she fabulous? So simple yet so genius.

So inspiring.... makes me want to write poetry again =) (and few things do that for me these days)