Somehow by Michael Estabrook

I recall the first time I read
Dante’s Divine Comedy
all the way through
as a medical sales rep
carrying it with me faithfully
as I trudged through airport lounges and hotel hallways
diners, company lobbies, doctors' waiting rooms . . .

Not because I was trying to show off
traipsing around with such an important
work of literature
but instead because reading it lifted me up and out
of my humdrum existence
into a world I scarcely could’ve imagined
with demons and torture, angels and sunlight
and everything in between.

Expecting that the mere reading of every word
would save my soul somehow.



Michael Estabrook is retired. He is now writing more poems and working more outside. Michael just noticed two Cooper’s hawks staked out in his yard or rather above it, which explains the nerve-wracked chipmunks. The Poet’s Curse: A Miscellany (The Poetry Box, 2019) is a recent collection.