All of us understand what poetry is.  Why is it then that none of us can define it?  What elevates it above prose?  What makes it magical? 
      It is not rhyme because "To be or not to be" is a play.  It is not form because "For whom the bell tolls" is a sermon.  It is not thought, beauty, love, faith, imagination, surprise, images, or even language because a novel has all these elements and more.  It is not art because art is in all the written treasures.  It is not music because the greatest poems are silent.  It is not truth because poets exaggerate.  It is not exaggeration because poems are true.  What then is poetry?
      Poetry is an artist's message, hewn from life, charged with emotion, and wrought into beautiful order that dances to our inner sacred music.  It is passionately written, in small increments, slowly, carefully, and tediously, like a painting, where every brush stroke is deliberate, calculated, and significant.  Every phrase, space, punctuation mark, line break, form, sound, and image is used to enhance, mystify, seduce, and conjure otherwise untapped, unreachable feelings.  Indeed, poetry is the most elusive language art that dances the skies with three mighty wings:
First, poetry is terse—A sky full of stars condensed into a raindrop; a soul full of dreams distilled into a smile; a heart full of yearning reduced into a tear; and a life's entire wisdom abridged into a phrase.
Second, poetry is recitative—The right verse at the right time charms, provokes, and evokes; it yearns to be reread, remembered, quoted, and shared; it is the tap dance of the soul on the stage of memory and the music of the mind sung by the oldest instrument.
Third, poetry is confessional—a deep, sincere, intense aria; a life force that emanates from one spirit and reaches out to share itself with others; it is the divine liturgy of hearts.
      Indefinable, only because every one of you is her definition.  When a verse pierces you, rents you, stuns you, touches you, moves you, propels you, then, in your heart, there beats a poem.  But, when it does not, it returns to heaven to sleep among all its forgotten siblings.  For every poem is the child of a poet, birthed with painful labor, and only You can decide if it will survive.