Sometimes, like today, I do not
want to be a poet. I do not want
to understand how it feels to hold
my short-bursted weeping, as if
we were passing glances between 
purpose and clock. Sometimes, like 
today, I do not have the patience to
coo and aah over the newborness of 
tender thoughts, or release the strength
required to sort through the bee-sting
philosophy of depression’s burned-out
ash embers. 

Oh, how I love you, I love you, I love you.
It isn’t for anything, really…this lamenting…
What will this dirty-cloth life do next …
how does it sleep at night? Over and over,
I’ll tell you I love you as if you, alone, 
culled the harmony of my inspiration from
a fresh-cut field of geranium memories. 
Over and over, the cardinals choose to bathe
in the old plastic bucket by the garage. 
I am only telling you this, so you may
wear my curiosity, too. 

Yet, somehow, there is a chance that I may be
a poet, that I understand, when the
porch swing has stilled its crookedness, and the
worried haints have settled onto the broad shoulders of
a night’s long emptiness, that soon I will cry
because there are plenty enough words to
get me home.