No, you write it!

I took this picture with my friend Kyle’s camera following a concert in an art gallery.  Those are the facts.  But, that’s not good enough because I’m pretty sure that this picture looks like a poem, and so I’m thinking of all of my past professors and their various writing prompts and wondering what story lives in this picture.  I can hear a push broom being whiskery and striking the ground.  Is there a single bead of sweat on the face that is out of the frame?  Does he wish that he could collapse on that chair and forget about this crummy night job and the graceless pay?  Is he surrounded by a crowd about to jump into a street performance version of Thriller?  Oh no!  Did he just remember that he…

And so inspiration comes.  Who knows, but I think that the root of poetry lies in being able to empathize with the imagination that lingers just below the surface of the ordinary and spring it to life.  It’s under the sweeping tendrels of a broom, in the way that shoes have personality when you look at how the laces are tied, and in all of different story lines that each of us would create looking at this picture.  I just know there’s a poem in that.