My Next Poem

Is it waiting for me to find it outdoors? Covered with the snow that fell this morning, just a dusting of powder snow, but sufficient to render it invisible in a material world. It has no inner light to signal its presence. It could be trapped just below the third step of a steep staircase. When I walk over it, my shadow briefly touching it, it remains mute though composed of words, silent unavailing words. Or perhaps my next poem will never become words on paper, because it is already resident in her heart where she cherishes its wordless message as it swells to fill interior space with our mingled good wishes for the other, both of us exerting a primal urge of such spiritual intensity that the poem occupies space and measures time, thus partaking of both material and immaterial worlds. My next poem could be lodged within a poem by Denise Levertov: her words cleverly jumbled and then rearranged will reveal something of my poetic worth when carefully detached from the body of her poem. And they will retain the silver sheen and luminous truth of her art: "To make / of song a chalice, / of Time, / a communion wine." Or I can sit in this large chair, leaning over this large desk, with scattered papers of unfinished poems, stalled or still-born or stubbornly resisting closure. Is my next poem one of these unruly children of my mind? Perhaps for my next poem I will surrender to such misrule, join my proper speech to a chaos of possibilities, and let the words find their desired niches, as sound and rhythm toss them in a riot of untrammeled creativity. This next poem will be dedicated to the spirit of Sir John Falstaff.