a new piece of the puzzle

I think I find poetry so hard to bear because it is so very strong, so concentrated. I find the dilution of prose easier to swallow. 

And so I prefer my poems very short. My attention wanders after more than, say, twenty lines. Not for lack of interest, but because the twenty-first line undoes me. Perhaps I should approach the poem as I approach the push-up: add one new repetition daily and rest as needed. 

The poem requires me to relinquish speed and I may as well admit that I generally choose to wolf down great mouthfuls of oatmeal prose and not sip slowly the port of poetry.

But the message I am finding in all things these days is Slow Down. Muscles are built and made strong by tearing them up. The heart is a muscle, too. Perhaps while I paradoxically simultaneously tear down and build my muscles with pushups and lunges I can tear down and thus build my heart with poetry.