On Discovering Frank O’Hara

Suddenly a poem hits her on the wing,

pricks her nose, tightens her throat.

Its spontaneity makes her mind sing

rising from lines with a sudden ring

of truth after years of learning verse by rote

at school with little heed to its meaning.

She’s stunned a lyric can bring

this feeling, charge her being like a note

that speaks to her soul’s inflecting;

didn’t expect he could make her eyes sting 

thought it the claim of the urbane who gloat

about books they’ve read, years of learning

to infer the arcane a poet is saying

yet it took just a minute to be smote

by his buoyant delight in his muse, sipping

a Coke with his lunch while scribbling

lines of giddy desire that dote

on his date whose charms are reaching

past all the world’s portraits, retreating.