WHAT MYSTERY IS A POEM’S COMING

it always comes at worst of times
& never when pen in hand 
& seated at an antique table 
grandpa used to woo with words 
his heart’s betrothed inspired by trout’s 
brook bubbling on to finally rest 
like glass reflect perfect world 
back through this window to 
parchment perched atop aged 
mahogany its scent hugging me 
& dad’s old chair creaks waltz with mockingbirds
while poems pour from endless fountain

amusing how the poet’s muse
pricks where paper’s weight 
cannot be born as hands
bear dinner to a wife 
for whom words were made
to speak what can’t be spoken
for emerald & eclipse were
fashioned from her eyes before 
they cleft the maker’s mold 
& in my head a verse unfurls that 
falls forgotten onto pavement 
long before a year would pass
between this work & the last

& even then i lamented the
time that disappeared to quick 
& stole each poem that
was to be a piece of me that 
lived in words imprinted 
but now a boy who bears my
name shall carry what of me 
is unique & some of that which isn’t 
like the need to write & struggle 
with each line & learn not 
how to be a poem’s master

a poem never comes when poet
solely inward turns to pull
one out like unwanted dandelions

a poem cannot come from wrestling
its heels & pinning it with pen nor 
by will or might can it be summoned
or stirred form its waiting to pierce hearts 
& a poem cannot come when it’s 
expected like a 5:10 bus

a poem never comes from 
insistence rather savoring existence 
& from colors & smells & 
sounds & cassettes & funeral homes 
& undisguised stares & from rocks 
& trees & birds in the air

it is not a thing taken but one given
& belongs not to the poet &
it lives unshackled by scholar’s 
chains or historian’s veins

it lives by those who breathe its 
syllables & syntax & story 
& survives through those that leave
what they think they know
& explore what they know they 
don’t know but know might be

to them a poem comes 
& they are poet