PERSONALIZED REJECTION

I really dig getting rejections for poetry submissions with a hint of humanity, just a clue that someone actually read your work and is responding to some aspect of it. It doesn't take much to give that glimmer of hope. Here is a freshly rejected poem with "potential." Whatever that means. As if the poem is a pimply-faced teenager, will soon go to college, then off into the world to become a real poem.

I Climb
J.B. Rowell

down into the crumpled spine
along Lake Michigan
leaving behind
the bleached bone rocks
to sit in the dark shine
of the lower rocks
where I can hear waves
and smell the wonderful rot

rock-anchored moss
leaps with water
long green strands
fall smooth again
over the curved neck
of wet stone

I came here once before
after a bike ride
in a white blur of fog mixing
lake and sky
but I could not see
did not watch
the absent-minded tangle
of plant and water
did not follow
the path the birds follow
a curve
one or two
quick wing beats

now I listen to watered rocks
taste coldness