for Peter Goldsworthy

Poetry shouldn’t be measured,
admonished Mr Keating,
who I’m sure most teachers 
would agree

taught his students nothing
worth knowing,
except how to live
for a while

until the bills caught up with them.
Instead he should
have cautioned his boys
that poets begin

as Emily and end up Walt,
or that poetry can –
and should –
be measured

in centimetres
on the x-axis against
snap, crackle and jolt on the y.
Less the essay and more

the allure of a folded
note, which keeps doing the rounds
in class: opening
a door

to one of those little rooms
when the muse
pin-balling from wall-to-wall, 
first lights a path –

Aidan Coleman