Hold it up to a light like a color slide

This would've been a perfect poem to start the month off with, however I didn't happen across it until today when I was at home and found a folder full of poems I'd collected over the years. This one I got from my senior AP Lit class with Mrs. Debra Gala.

Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with a rope
and torture a confession out of it.

they begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.