Saturday's daily poem (6/20/09)

Where are you going and who with?

This is the poem I can’t right.
It keeps trying to walk on its hands,
stand on its head, etc. It
does somersaults when I ask it
to follow a line I’ve drawn in the sand.
I’m hot, I say, can’t you just do it?

This is the poem I wish would do that
thing good poems do so well, you know,
the seizing-the-unconscious-moment thing
that leaves you with dazzled, shallow breathing.

I keep thinking this is the poem that will save me
from the day’s unyielding reality,
but I realize that’s a different poem

and that this is the poem that plagues me,
because it knows it doesn’t have to do what I say,
because it could just laze around and eat all the tomatoes
in my garden if I don’t watch out—
because this one doesn’t get the difference
between national boundaries and geographic impediments,
and it doesn’t think a passport should really come between
an idea that feels like traveling and where its going.
Because it knows I’ll give in
eventually and let it
say anything it wants, just to get it back on the train with me.