Titles can be so much a part of a poem. I love this from Billy Collins for instance:

Just as the hare is zipping across the finish line,
the tortoise has stopped once again
by the roadside,
this time to stick out his neck
and nibble a bit of sweet grass,
unlike the previous time
when he was distracted
by a bee humming in the heart of a wildflower.

Those little lines are enjoyable enough. The sound, the image, the simplicity, even the subtle praise of slowness implied, all ring of a Mary Oliver poem. In fact, I can just as easily picture Oliver in place of the tortoise.

But what makes the poem, for me, is the not-so-subtle title Collins gives it:

”My Hero”

There’s a wry smile written across the entire poem (which scrambles the original fable in fun ways) that says My heroes are not the ones that usually go by that name.