This is the poem I can't write.
This is the tuning fork, the bells cast of Himalayan
metal
the one good note sounding on a broken piano.
Where is it? Why
can't I write it?
It's just too beautiful.
Who would trust someone like me
to utter the dreadful exquisite,
sing the endless glory of the universe?
Who would confer such a gift upon me?
Writing this poem would be like receiving a robe
of the finest silk,
a garment grave and sweet
as the speech at my father's funeral
when a thousand pipes
wail across the valley where trees dip in the wind.
This is the poem I will write, whether or not I am
worthy.
Only I can stop me and I will not stop me, can not let go
of the current,
trapped by the grip of my own electricity, charging and
burning my hands
and I don't care.
I am simply too small.
I am the poetic mouse who survives beneath the
floorboards
while a world clatters above me.
I
am the poem I have written.
