<html aria-label="message body"><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div dir="auto" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div dir="auto" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div dir="auto" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><font size="5" style="font-size: 22px;">The Best Poem <i>Ever</i></font><div style="font-size: 16px;"><font size="5" style="font-size: 22px;"><br></font></div><div style="font-size: 16px;"><font size="5" style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">What if, says a small child to me this afternoon,</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">We made a poem without using any words at all?</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Wouldn’t that be cool? You could use long twigs,</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">And feathers, or spider strands, and arrange them</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">So that people</span><em> imagine</em><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> what words could be there.</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Wouldn’t that be cool? So there’s a different poem</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">For each reader. That would be the best poem </span><em>ever</em><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The poem wouldn’t be on the page, right? It would</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Be in the air, sort of. It would be between the twigs</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">And the person’s eyes, or </span><em>behind</em><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> the person’s eyes,</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">After the person saw whatever poem he or she saw.</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Maybe there are a </span><em>lot</em><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> of poems that you can’t write</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Down. Couldn’t that be? But they’re still there even</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">If no one can write them down, right? Poems in</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Books are only a little bit of all the poems there are.</span><br><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Those are only the poems someone found words for.</span></font></div><div style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="5" style="font-size: 22px;"><br></font></span></div><div style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="5" style="font-size: 22px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>- Brian Doyle</font></span></div></div></div></div></body></html>