Musings / Leaves on Steps

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.