WRITING POEMS [PART 2] But once let loose the poetic urge, the poem struggles to be born so you sit and sigh, and tug your hair, search for the word you want, clench your hands in frustration, maybe even give up. Sorry. Not every poem breathes. But often

WRITING POEMS

[PART 2]

But once let loose the poetic urge,
the poem struggles to be born
so you sit and sigh, and tug your hair,
search for the word you want,
clench your hands in frustration,
maybe even give up. Sorry.
Not every poem breathes.

But often poems just arrive,
announcing what they want
and trailing, tailing away
like a half-glimpsed comet–
was it really ever there?
Or swerving through your mind
to snatch an image here,
a perfumed memory there.

And sometimes just words arrive
bubbling, pushing, gushing, tumbling,
flowing down my body in the shower–
catch them before they’re swirling down the drain!

A poem grows by itself,
demands its space, its time,
so you must dig and scribble-scrabble,
listen to its rhythm, find its shape.

And when a poem’s done, that’s it.
A final image, a last line,
‘I’m done,’ it says, and turns around
like a satisfied cat;
curls up, finally out of the mind,
scratched on the page for good or ill,
and dreams there of waking to leap
into another mind to purr
and fan its whiskers out
in sympathetic ecstasy.