Differences

On April 6, 2026, I posted the Note below that attempted an explanation of the difference between what the writer intends a poem to mean and the meaning or meanings found by the reader: 

I plant the meaning
and wait for its true shape—
it rises elsewhere,
called by another’s voice,
fruit I will not gather.

What I meant this note to convey was the idea that once a poem leaves my hands, it stops obeying whatever I intended it to mean, and its meanings can grow because what a reader finds is something I cannot control. Each reader brings their own ideas to a poem, ideas shaped by their own experiences and expectations. A reader does not simply receive a poem, they meet it. In that meeting, whatever meaning is originally intended may appear clearly, or it may be opaque, or it may step aside to let another meaning take its place—or it may end up meaning nothing at all. My intention can shape how the structure is built, the rhythm, the images, the pressure of the lines, but it doesn't dictate the experience of the reader who steps inside it once it's built.

The following poem grew out of that Note. I think it might do a better job to explain what I was trying to say than my earlier note.

Fruit I Will Never Taste

I planted a meaning
carefully,
pressed it into the dark
with both hands,
certain
of what would rise.

I watered it
with chosen words,
measured light,
a season of breath.

But what came up
was not mine alone.
It bent toward other weather,
answered to unfamiliar names,
opened in colors
I had not seen
when it was only a thought
in my palm.

Someone passing
called it something else,
and it was.

Someone else
did not see it at all.

Still, the meaning grows,
untroubled by me now,
rooted in gardens
I cannot see,
bearing fruit
I will never taste.