That's how I think of my tea in the morning, with its heaping spoonful of honey. A spoonful of (honey) makes the medicine go down. Not that I can't drink my tea straight, but the honey does its thing and I'm happier for it.
I think of poetry in much the same way. Every morning, after a few yoga stretches, I read a bit of it. Mornings when I feel too lazy or too hurried for yoga, I do it anyway, for the poetry. The poetry is part of the ritual now. It can't be done without yoga, and yoga can't be done without poetry.
It's a spoonful of honey to make the rest of the day go down smoothly.
A friend sent me to the perfect site for this. Poetry Daily offers Today's Poem and, if you're not careful, can take up the rest of your morning as well skipping from one lovely link to another.
Today's poem, Within Shouting Distance of the Coosa, by R.T. Smith, also sent me to the Wiki to check out my suspicion that the Coosa was a river. And then, research in hand, I took a little morning stroll with Mr. Smith:
Within Shouting Distance of the Coosa, as published in Pleides, Vol. 32, No. 1
Once in Alabama when I was young
and given to aimless ambling,
I followed a red road between pines
where even at midday the cicadas
were complaining, and with nothing
on my mind and expecting nothing
I was about to pause for water
when the road's weedy roughness
opened to a clearing where boards
wounded by years of weather
formed a modest church, the peak
of its steeple gone and door scotched
open. The wind was scattering pollen,
and somewhere off in the needles
a mockingbird thought it was evening
and half-heartedly sang. Do I need
to say I forced the door and found
everything rain-soaked and broken,
the pews only planks whose cinder
blocks had fallen or were, as I've said,
ruined? But I heard a hum or what
I thought could be a hymn rising
from behind the altar and squinted
to see the worker bees dance and circle
where they'd swarmed. Young
as I was, I understood "not one step
closer, do not disturb," so backed
away, because I knew they believed
their honey holy and would not
suffer it to be troubled without
rushing to beset me, and besides I'd
already been touched by the Word
and held under down at the river
till I heard God's gold voice shining,
insects swarming the choir's serenade,
bee sound the very sound He made.