People sometimes tell me 
they have trouble understanding poetry.

That's because they consume it
as they would a banana,
starting at one end and chomping
down to the other.

Poetry has to be consumed like 
corn on the cob.

One should start at one end
and work down to the other,
but then one has to 
go back to the beginning --
change one's angle of perspective --
and - again - go from one end to the other.

I can't
emphasize
this point about changing 
one's angle of perspective
enough. 

There is a difference:
with corn on the cob, one rotates the corn,
but, with poetry, one has to rotate something 
within the reader.
Otherwise, one is just chomping into
an empty rut -
a track devoid of sustenance.

Then, one has to repeat the process
until every last morsel has been consumed. 

That's how one ingests poetry.