Poetry is sometimes easy like the wind rushing
to where there is not much wind, caressing in waves,
invisible and pliant like the air, as effortless as
breathing it. Poetry is sometimes impossible,
like turning the tumbler of a lock with your fingertip,
like climbing a mountain barefoot in a blizzard
of screaming, sliding sleet, like a tearing cry
that dies into a whimper in your throat as you
realize the futility of that which you do,
the implacability of the beast you fight.

Sometimes, there are no words that can describe
the machinations and the subtle ticking of a clock
that beats in time to the human soul. Not hearing
the rhythm, you forget the music until your heart
sings again and you dance free like a young ballerina
cutting ballet. No poem is a picture that captures
the fluttering, soaring and sinking in the heart’s chambers.
You choose a word that fits, discard ten of its brothers,
yet feel surprise when your sentences have no answers
for the questions in your chest. You mourn every phrase
you have lost as you fell asleep. Knowing not
what you forgot, you move on to new questions.

You cannot miss what you’ve never felt, but you can yearn for
something you’ve forgotten. What is the difference to you
if you cannot remember the difference? The embryos of
the heart and mind are fragile. Your heart sings of a country
it cannot see anymore now that your back is turned,
you cast fishing nets behind you into the past blindly.
You remember that you have forgotten, and you forget
what bears remembering. You remember a day long past
not as the day that passed but as the memory of its passing,
yet feel surprise when years later and many forgettings hence,
it happened to someone else altogether.