Middle Winter [8] — Poetics

Sometimes I stay away from my words
so I do not write the poem I should

not write  sometimes I call to my words
to make that very poem without me

*

Sometimes I build a poem so
carefully from the foundation up

over time, like a house. Carefully
but not like you carefully construct a

statement. That poem so carefully
built is no more a statement than

a house is. You can live in a house
or a poem but not in a statement

which is a small thin thing that is
laid on a table in a house and holds

nothing up nor lets nothing down.
Sometimes a poem is a raindrop

on a piece of paper on which
a statement is written, on a table

close to an open window on
a mild midwinter day.

*

The poem is a rock thrown from the moon.

Or the moonflower that furls into a fist at the
sun every morning.