What? Am I Not Enough

Of a poet, do I not have grand enough ideas?

Oh, I know, I am a poet of small moments,

of little thoughts, of the soda bottle,

the empty hand and the rusted automobile

parked behind the tumble down

old side-of-the-road country stores,

 and not even the whole car

but the lugs under one missing shiny silver moon hubcap,

and how my daddy had a Ford like that

and we would eat ice cream in the back seat on a hot day,

and I don’t have some deeper message,

for that I apologize, only that this is life,

this is the best life, except maybe for fishing

or eating twenty-one golden fried shrimp

at beach walk-ups.

If you need more than that,

 maybe you need a real poet,

who can write the whole universe

in one perfect line about a supermarket in southern California.

I am not that poet.

I am the poet of the small moment.

I hope that is enough.