So many poems birthed at dawn
or just before
when the trickster gods
are passed out and cannot
plot pratfalls for mere mortals.
Turmoil eases up a bit,
but anything can come next.
You might lose the courage
to eat breakfast or find yourself
trying to type on liquid paper.
You could be struck by
nostalgia for hula hoops or
begin to feel your teeth dissolve.
You want to make a poem that
coils, rises up and strikes
the heart like an angry snake,
but it is easy to get sidetracked.
After all, you are only bones
in a sack spitting out words
that vainly seek forever and
the present so successfully
hides the future. But it's early,
go down into the quantum
quarry of language,
pick up a few likely chunks,
haul them back and let the world
select the words. Be patient as
a telephone waiting to ring.
Dare to **** a peach. Let the
words gather unto themselves
like clouds until each new page,
scarred by those glyphs,
becomes the living promise
of the day just begun, like
a butterfly gliding over clover.
No task. Only the being of.
~mce