the refractory poet
It is not the withdrawal from a dry nib,
but from the waiting for the emotion to
coalesce like moths around the bright candle
that is my mind.
A goblet filling with the golden words
that sprinkle from that font upon the linen
of the birth sheet or upon the shroud of
the having not been said.
This is what yearns in me when the oneness
of the immediacy of haiku, that short expression
of all the conundrums of life; and yet, and yet,
never to feel the depth of the visitation of the magi
on the dark blue night of the longing and waiting.
Not a single star twinkling in the universe of being,
but the slow dawn that will blow the moon milk
across the slow bones of my sitting, thinking,
for when / then
the tango from the inkling of a smile
flows in the love-juice of a fully formed poem;
then!
I wince at my tongued words, and cry ...
Bathe long in the eraser tears of a time gone by.
Let me sleep now upon this poem, gentle in the
satisfaction of seeing the butterfly, the open door,
the longing, fly across the meadows with
the like-minded upon the glory of these days.
