Sometimes the poem is pleasurable like cat's cradle or silly putty and then you make a skein of the string and put it in the drawer, ball the putty up and cork it back in its cylinder.
Sometimes it is urgent that you write this poem.
Or sometimes it becomes urgent as you write. Coals that you didn't know lived within fire up, and lines and stanzas end with smoke.
Sometimes you assemble a village of words. How do the villagers help each other--can we angle this roof? replant this crop? It is always cloudy over this half of the village. And here a volcano is planted and here a monster is hidden in the corn. Boots on the ground, you finger the soil and push the sun up higher with a stick.
If it's a poem, it's going to snow some time so enter with more than a weskit. I'm a little afraid to knock on the doors or look in the windows. What if it's only me that lives here sitting at every kitchen table with every coffee cup? What if it's all my people--the ones I want to see and those I don't? Chickens in the church pews. Blackbirds in a tent. Buttercup drinking every buttercup. Where is the bridge out, the brazier we can light to make the balloon go up?
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