Think about how different it is to have someone walk up to you with wet clothes and tell you how they just fell through the ice of the pond next to the road, and that someone being you.
Some things that activate survival mode are environment events that threaten our security, safety, and functionality. An overload of the senses will do it, or too much of something we don't need, or not enough of something we do need, such as: hunger, thirst, extreme cold or heat, loud noise, exposure to poison, fumes, smoke, blinding light, continuous darkness, contact with anything that causes any kind of pain from 1 to 10. Or any event that limits mobility, interrupts bodily functions, perception, or cognition, or the threat of any of the above. Two exceptions being pain caused by physical training that hurts but is not harmful and thrill seekers who experience danger and fear to produce a short euphoria.
Compared to the handful of things that provide physical pleasure, there are a hundred things that contribute to pain, discomfort, or dissatisfaction. So to increase the possibility of experiencing pleasure lets allow the lessening or elimination of any of the above to count as being a pleasure, a relief. Satisfying a hunger or thirst or going through the day without pain is a pleasure.
Suddenly, the warmth of the Sun on your skin on a cold day is a pleasure, a piece of fruit a feast, the water you are drinking now is the best water you have ever tasted, the morning air is a joy, walking on a path up a hill is a heroic feat, comfort equals victory, and adversity is a dare to overcome. Meeting the needs that arise from being human is winning.
Poetry is not going to feed you, or keep you from pain of illness or accident, you can't pour it in a glass, or drive it to work. Most people are to busy surviving to care about anything outside of their own surviving. The power of poetry is the power of appreciation, a celebration of relief. At best it is as powerful as music, mystery, and magic. And a parody of itself, at worst. Poetry can satisfy a need within us to sing along, side by side with the striving and surviving, celebrate the mysteries of life that we all can agree on, and speaks to the magic that exists for us to survive at all.