Day 3 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt:

… American poet Frank O’Hara [s]… poems feature a breezy, funny, conversational style. His poem “Why I Am Not a Painter” is pretty characteristic, with actual dialogue and a playfully offhand tone. Following O’Hara, … write a poem that obliquely explains why you are a poet and not some other kind of artist – or, if you think of yourself as more of a musician or painter (or school bus driver or scuba diver or expert on medieval Maltese banking) – explain why you are that and not something else!

Hence:

Why I’m Not a Poet

Well, dang, this is embarrassing. 
Here I am, caught in the act;
attempting to commit poesy,
and I’m not even a poet.

I think too concretely to be a poet. 
Poets use stepping stones as metaphor.
I use concrete as stepping stones. 

Poet Frost says “good fences make good neighbors.”
I say good fences guard my veggies from hungry rabbits.

Gertrude Stein: “A rose is a rose is a rose.”
Me: That damned rose I’ve dug up three times now
is growing back yet again! Where’s the shovel? 

You wax poetic,
I wax the teeth on my dovetail saw. 

Alas, if not a poet, then what am I? 
A mason, a gardener, a landscaper, a woodworker?
A stepper of stones, a guardian of gardens,
a shaper of shrubbery, a worker of wood?

I dunno. How’s that for a poetic closing line?