Wind

One should be clear from the outset,

one is not the same as another,

but this is how I write poetry, sometimes.

I walk around with my eyes open,

I listen with my ears,

I make some effort to notice the things

that make an impression on me.

And then I go to bed at a reasonable hour.

And being the age I am,

I wake in the middle of the night -

sometimes the needle on the phonograph skips,

and the needle just ticks –

round and round and round it ticks -

until I finally get up and sit in front of a page.

And then I let the lines go down,

I let one word follow another,

until there are no more.

It can’t be as simple as that, you say?

I once had a boat.

I bought it for five hundred dollars.

I futzed with the lights on the trailer.

I hitched it to my Mazda pickup

and I drove it to the lake.

I spent an hour or so rigging the mast and sails,

and then I backed it into the water.

I kept one hand on the rudder

and one eye on the billowing sail,

and yes, it’s was simple as that.

If I don’t have to make the water

and I don’t have to make the wind blow,

there’s not much more to sailing than that.

I was never the greatest of sailors,

but I felt what it was

to fly over the water

in the face of the wind.

On that boat on that lake,

I could feel the wind and the water.

And if it were not for poetry,

I’d buy another boat,

one the size of a long wagon,

and I’d pull it behind me as I walked along the shore,

I’d set the sail by the river’s edge,

and wait for the wind to blow.

It would be as simple as that.