Snide alert: An insider's view of a popular manner of contemporary poetry that goes down like a mango smoothie and has you feeling good about yourself

My M.O.

(A candid revelation in quiet couplets about how to pursue and promulgate a certain kind of poetry, following what could be called the off-the-rack Ferdinand-the-Bull aesthetic.)

Hello, there, reader!  I’d like to invite you

Into my poetry, which speaks plainly

And with a bemused tone of wonder and

Appreciation of the natural world

As it dances with us in our ordinary lives.

This is my inexhaustible modus operandi.

It’s a living, of sorts. My poems dependably display

Sensitivity and the rewards of paying attention

To such things as the minute devotions of a grasshopper,

A pond’s stillness, and something cute about waterfowl.

Reading my poems is always an invitation

For you to be sensitive, too.  I want to say

That you can be as sensitive as I am,

Though of course I got there first, as the poet

Who is so plainly sensitive, and published. But if

You read my poetry aloud in gatherings of folks

Also honing their sensitivity, you will be ahead

Of them as you intone my articulated virtue

Of being in the moment, at peace, paying attention

To insects, plant life and such, being homely about

The lessons they have to teach us. First, find your own

Grasshopper. Now, loaf a bit as Walt Whitman advised.

Then you and I can be quite sensitive together,

Once you understand my M.O., don’t you see.