What is Poetry?

It’s the phone calls I never made.

It’s you walking down a different hallway just to see me
and me knowing.

It’s the fishhook I found
in the blue heron I’ve seen on the dock for twelve years.

It’s the bird recognizing me back.

Poetry is the cheap notebook I wrote in throughout college.
Every morning at 6 AM with blueberry coffee
and empty chairs sitting next to me.
All of it to be thrown out when I was 28.

It’s what I wrote on napkins during lunch at school
and in the corners of physics worksheets.

Poetry is the day you realize
it’s more than just the way they make you laugh.

It’s the way she stops texting you in the mornings,
and you know she’s not getting up late.

Poems are paintings, songs, dead ladybugs,
and the last time you pull out of the driveway of your childhood home,
with your father watching from the living room window.

It’s holding your sister’s baby for the first time.

It’s the trip in the ambulance
when I needed oxygen,
and I just kept thinking:
this is a poem.
This is a poem.

It’s saying yes to getting married
but never making it that far.

Poetry is jumping into cold water in September
when everyone else is inside.

It’s the steam rising from my coffee
on a screened-in porch in Lake George 
in October.

It’s watching your brother pack up and go.

It’s your father telling your mother
for the hundredth time in the kitchen
that he’s going to grow out his beard.

It’s all the advice you give to your friend
but should’ve given to yourself.

It’s leaving and turning around.

Poetry is the band starting
after you waited months to watch them play.

It’s all the years you thought you wasted
but needed to happen to change your life.

It’s you as a child believing in God,
even though no one told you to.

It’s explaining without explaining.

It’s you telling them
this is going downhill
when it’s already over.

It’s the crying and the laughing in the car.

Poetry is relief.

It’s an ocean,
not a picture of one.

It’s a snowstorm,
and you putting your bare hands in the snow.

It's writing notes on your phone on the bus
and later sitting on a basement floor
with a sentence you can’t get out of your head.

It's being unapologetically you.
Or apologetically you.

It’s writing when you’re sad,
you’re happy,
and when you’re nothing but confused.

Poetry is an obsession
with the beginning, the end, the middle.

Words, feelings, life.

An obsession with saying what you mean
without having to say it.

It’s yours.
It’s mine.

© 2026 Casey Murphy. All rights reserved.

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I write poetry and short fiction. Often the two blur together in my work.

Down the line, I’m planning to launch a paid tier with fiction and longer essays, along with optional personalized feedback for writers — poems, short stories, whatever you’re working on.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, feel free to stay tuned.

Thanks for reading <3