The poem of a famous person

Sometimes I’ll read a poem by a famous person
and think,
“Hey that’s my thought, I’ve had that thought before!”
and then,
well, then, I’ll realize
that they had the thought, the spirit of the poem, before me.

I usually feel a bit guilty at this point,
about my mistaken sense of possession,
but I know deeply,
somewhere in my gut, perhaps down by my liver,
that these thoughts aren’t really possessed by any one person.

These thoughts, and these poems
swim like fish within a wild and boundless river
and I have simply caught one
which has been released from further upstream.