The Next Poem

How much better it seems now than when it is finally done– the unforgettable first line, the cunning way the stanzas run. The rhymes soft-spoken and suggestive are barely audible at first, an appetite not yet acknowledged like the inkling of a thirst. While gradually the form appears as each line is coaxed aloud– the architecture of a room seen from the middle of a crowd. The music that of common speech but slanted so that each detail sounds unexpected as a sharp inserted in a simple scale. No jumble box of imagery dumped glumly in the reader's lap or elegantly packaged junk the unsuspecting must unwrap. But words that could direct a friend precisely to an unknown place, those few unshakeable details that no confusion can erase. And the real subject left unspoken but unmistakable to those who don't expect a jungle parrot in the black and white of prose. How much better it seems now than when it is finally written. How hungrily one waits to feel the bright lure seized, the old hook bitten.