Finding a new poet
is like finding a new wildflower
out in the woods. You don't see

its name in the flower books, and
nobody you tell believes
in its odd color or the way

its leaves grow in splayed rows
down the whole length of the page. In fact
the very page smells of spilled

red wine and the mustiness of the sea
on a foggy day—the odor of truth
and of lying.

And the words are so familiar,
so strangely new, words
you almost wrote yourself, if only

in your dreams there had been a pencil
or a pen or even a paintbrush,
if only there had been a flower.

—Linda Pastan

Rights & Access

from Heroes In Disguise, 1991
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY

Copyright 1991 by Linda Pastan.
All rights reserved.

Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. from Heroes In Disguise. Copyright 1991 by Linda Pastan. 

  • Linda Pastan

    Linda Pastan (1932- ) is the author of over a dozen poetry collections, including Insomnia: Poems (W. W. Norton and Company, 2015).