the refractory poet

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.