I’m not the one to say poems write themselves,
nor that they take control of me, their slave.
still, when I have a destiny in mind
I give them rein; I trust they know the way
by now, recall their training: where to go,
and at what pace, and when to turn to right
or left, and which trespasses to avoid.
even so, on occasion, they forget
just where I mean to travel, overshoot
the mark (for often I will oversleep),
then stop dead of themselves in some strange land
and wake me with their waiting for their cue
to move forward or back - forsake the road
crop the grass beside it, or refresh
themselves at roadside pool or puddle.
Once, I nearly fell out of my seat
when I jerked awake to look beyond them
at a lake to which they drew (the window
on my right, it was) and they, heads downward,
drinking from the air like it was water.
I have to wonder, thumb and forefinger
smeared with ink, another supper missed
and my face gone pale as a sheet of paper,
if my mix of metaphors means madness
- it’s just that, writing poetry, I get
carried away; perhaps this one’s not mine
to hack, its wherewithal possession of
the thing which must keep moving. So it goes.
© 1999 - French Bread Publications/Gale Acuff