what even is the public domain?

for the first time after almost two years of blogging what must be now about 200 poems, a poet contacted me to tell me to take down a piece. (hi david. oh and david it will take a few days for it to disappear from the web. i know this well as i once wrote a coworkers full name up here by accident and then spent three days sweating as it continued to show up in google searches. although chase would probably love that i post his sharpest zingers, loveable attention whore that he is)at any rate i was perfectly happy to take the poem down. and i wish david good luck in what must be a full time job monitoring the internet for people like me who appreciate his work and share it to inspire people to do further investigation into the poet, the form, the ideas that the work brings up. the web is bluring lines and i understand it must be frustrating for a writer to keep control of their work. but this is not a poem i copied from a book. its online now anyway(at NPR) where it will stay for however long NPR leaves poems up until they're archived. years? then again i assume they paid for the rights... but now its available for free for the masses... so then its just a matter of supporting npr via hits on their website? i'm honestly not sure how i feel about this. its terribly complicated. anyway i'll keep posting poems on my little blog that ten people read on a good day since in 199 cases it hasnt seemed to bug anyone enough to mention it but if poets dont want their work up they can let me know.

for those of you interested, heres the unauthorized poem