I Saw a Poet Today - A Different Kind of Joy Post

I turned on my computer
to find a poet standing there.
I took a walk through campus
and heard the soft pads of the poet
perambulating past.

I filled my coffee,
returned to my office,
full of papers ungraded
and lessons unplanned,
but I found myself returning
to the computer
and the poet I'd found standing there.

Mixed of video and audio,
she metered her matters.
I began to type outward,
to punch the keys digital
and to play within the post.
I stuttered a "P" on the keyboard
and turned it over on my tongue
like candy for the sweet sound of it.

The act felt like reaching
like yearning and desire,
like the skin of a cheek cupped
in a bare hand,
like touch and water
and sky and tree
and all the things I can know
in a syllable.

I found a poet on my computer.
The bits and bites
of arranged data brought her to me,
but the miracle of her poem
is that it made me want to make one too.

In the hollow cave of my mouth
I found the hibernating tongue
rising, hungry, blind with sleep,
but the desire, the need for food,
the sustenance of a syllable,
drove it from the darkness
only to stand dumbly blinking
in the light of her poet's dance.