A woman I have always admired

shyly and distantly
told me that I would be a really good poet
if I just wrote one poem a day
every day
for a year.
That was fifteen years ago
and I’ve always seen her
in imagination 
witty and accomplished
and writing poems every day,
lines like birds in wire cages
beautiful and wrought.
But today I saw her
and the only poems she has been writing
are those of the decay of
her own life,
dirges from a bed,
and I want to write poems for her.
They will not be caged birds
but wild crows
ugly loud sharp
but alive and there for her
every day
with gifts shining and ragged
but still brightness for her,
poems I’ve found and thought
“She will love this” 
and have dropped in her lap.