What Poems Do When They Launch in the Head
or, What a Poem Does When a Poem Does
Poems
scatter with the river bugs when the deer bends to drink
They dream
of getting born in chemistry, geometry and western civ
Face-down in
a hotel pool. In the divot of a
pillow. Among weeds
In the junk
drawer. Sliding across ice of the rush
hour freeway
Stacked in
corners or blowing by in a gas stationed landscape
Poems everywhere
in the disturbed & lazy murk of lake bottom
In glances at
the strip club and in the way lips or in the bills
Poems disarmed
by the jovial and extraordinary and pivotal
Wherever
stark, deaf or orphaned, poems. No keys
to get in
Poems. No triggers to pull poems, washing to shore
by the flies
Poems in the
scowling faced son sleeping without forgiving
On the
floor, sprawled naked and bathed in moonlight stark
When calm
strikes in the sunset with beach bark and frogs
Over the
next cornfield curve, poems, darkening windshield
Poems, thank
heavens--awake at the wheel--a long way home