Reader Input

One of the challenges in reading poetry is the requirement of participation.  The work is not all done for you.  A poem of Philip Larkin's shows how the imagination of the reader can vary the images.  Each reader provides the look of the doctor, the priest.                                 
                              
                                  ​Days

                 What are days for?
                 Days are where we live
                They come, they wake us
                 Time and time over.
                  Days are to be happy in:
                  Where can we live but days/

                  Ah, solving that question
                  Brings the priest and the doctor
                  In their long coats
                  Running over the fields.

                   Philip Larkin
                   Collected Poems
                   Farrar, Straus  &  Giroux
                   1989