Words
always bother poets.
Especially at
night if
the dictionary
is not been shut
locked up tight
under the discipline
of a silver key.


The words
slip from
the interior  pages
like trout
through
the grasp
of a poet’s
bear fever dreams.

They hollow
outside
the stanzas
the poet
has built
as a small shelter
on the paper white prairies.


There is a  hollowness
in the beehives
beyond
the measure of winds.
Even the moon  must rise
and roll out of clumsy stanza.

Hungry words
with their gleaming ribs
and shallow flesh
mourning that they have escaped
the poet
foreseeing in some future day
will place them
in the proper  chambers
crannies and corners
of his misshapen barrels
and the river
of his awkward speech
may never flow
past
the castles
of elves
that sing
flying fish
in lush ink
in the depth
by the barrel.