Usually it comes all at once in a rush,
I struggle to keep up at the keyboard.
Never arriving perfect,
I’ll have to fiddle with a line
here or there or leave it for a time
and wait for the sublime image
to reveal itself.

There are days I forget poems come
from outside me,
and I’ll try to wring one
from the damp rag of my brain.

But these don’t have
the resonance of a bird cry
in forest, nor the density
of a cow in the field.

They are strained,
like dock rope in a hurricane,
the moving man’s muscles
on piano day.