I tried for a
long time
not to
write.
Looked plainly at new
places, traveled without
paper, bought magazines at
airports, took
jobs that paid, dug into
the endless
domestic
day.
Poetry is patient. It
forgives the squander
of silent afternoons,
allows books to lie
flat or stand
straight.
It accepts still hands as
a passing threat and waits
its turn like an empty
drawer in an ordered
desk.
I must work hard. Record
these ways of saying that sound
like ways of speaking
but are also ways of
meaning.
Alight. Offer
the close-fitting word
to that one other
who from a plane seeks out
the unsettling sight
of green and brown
circular swathes
of irrigated
land.
Written April 2013