#2296 -- I went looking for tomorrow’s poem

 

2296

7.103

14.iv.26

I went looking for tomorrow’s poem

 

made a little cap of my hand

that was to scan the horizon

 

had a good gaze

 

I set out as if day were a page

and so it is

 

I searched in the fallow

knew I had the words

or it was under them all along

 

or I had been

now the poem was gone

 

had my hunting hat, my whistle

took along a grim thesaurus

I gambled with the light

 

one must conjure one’s own, you know

 

yet what’s to come must lie out of prediction

as if a thought askew

an object in the wilds of will

a picture musing too

 

you’d think somewhere in my head ahead

the poem come unstuck

leash loosed at least

or tether ending

 

I’d tempt it in with, say, sugar

or sly – a sidle up, rub here

and wisely

 

one sneaks up behind

tap or a tickle

will words turn?

one never knows what will find

 

but that the poem’s wishful –

the desperate hope

in a drastic season

 

must have been under the great stone of time

 

I call it my own forever after

call it all sorts of things

 

I hang it on the wall and sing

although it’s not yet there