Working On A Poem With George

I got there strung out on sleeplessness and too much coffee. I told him so, saying I'd do my best, and he said that was fine, and giving me a glass of water, led me to the glass dining-room table, a stack of papers and a pencil waiting at each end. He sat at one end, I at the other, and there we were. My mind felt like a car that revved and died, but George proceeded calmly, reading me the lines he thought needed work. My crippled mind gave me ideas, and with nothing else to do as time flicked by in the space, the vast space between us, I passed them on to George. He considered each, tried it out, sometimes used my word or phrase, sometimes used it as a stepping-stone to find his own. George honored the silence and the time, and I began to, too. I saw my mind, that limping, hobbled bird, could hop, then fly as well as any. Later, walking out the door, well-fed by fires of concentration, my mind and body both flew from that perch into a surprise paradise newly created while I'd been indoors, my spirit intoxicated by the liquor of the breeze, eyes oozing the honey of seeing.