Does a poet ever write
poems about the future?
No ground from which a redbud
sprouts to be the heart-shaped
leaves reminding you of February,
second grade, that red-wrapped
lacy box, your mother’s scissors,
her deft hands. The future’s
more a block of unused clay
to pound and mold into the shape
behind your eyes,
and time its only kiln.
Poets are not potters.
The past still holds its form
though it, too, has softened
at the edges, just enough,
some days,
to fit onto the page.