The paths of the poets
Are easy traced.
They find alleys, dead ends
Attended only by whippoorwills
And wet leaves.
Or they are stumbling home
With breastfuls of rhyme
To nursling notebooks,
Mumbling strange mnemonic incantations
Images leaking from them
Like mother’s milk for the wailing infant.
They find themselves at fences,
Pawing from their pockets
Paper scraps and pencil stubs
Any horizontal for a table,
Brought to a stop to sketch the scene:
A row of birds on the wire,
Grey and attentive as pilgrims.
You will know the poets in the park –
Each a private enterprise gone public:
Slack on the benches,
Dumbstruck in the leafy bowers,
Tongues hung out for any lick of sound, or sight
Of burnt leaf, or image of wing or something mythic,
A snatch of fine sermon to offer along,
Scribbling their hearts out
Lest flight disperse the perfect composition.