Michelangelo said the work of art awaited him beneath the slab of marble, the task for him being merely to uncover it.
In my own small way I understand that mentality as I write these days. The poem I know is “possible” waits patiently beyond the first tentative lines of a succession of drafts, across a murky divide, and with luck and patience perhaps I will reach it, reveal all that it might be. But it is fleet footed and elusive and a task master, each and every time.
Here is one I wrote recently that felt exactly like that.
***
I should have bought gold.
Written that idea down.
Paid more attention.
Slept less.
I wonder lately where everyone has gone.
Why the most important never
quite makes the list.
And why enormous changes are so often required
at the very last minute
with no chance to catch our breath.
I wonder lately where everyone has gone
and why I stood by.
I wonder
and this most of all
if even for a moment
I made someone happy.
A sequence of my poems has been published in a hardcover book entitled The Music of Leaving Poems by Tricia McCallum