! ! On Not Writing A Poem

and sometimes I’m sitting, quiet, wondering whether a poem somewhere would like to speak through me and it doesn’t but the stillness as I wait - that’s good. Then just occasionally, when I’m not visited by a poem, I visit – without planning - Poetry. It’s a place without a name where many things meet: there’s space, and hope, and possibility, and, out of the present, a future growing.. and something that’s not less, or not less bright, than gold; where all the poems that have been written mix on friendly terms with those that are yet to come; with a sense of company, humanity, very undemanding, and what Pooh Bear would call, Everybody Listening… and there’s no claim, no need to write about I Was There and Experienced This, and do you wish you had too, and here’s my name so modestly after a line space and it’s very refreshing, even reassuring in its way. Maybe if we were back in, oh, Greek times? I would wash, put on a white robe, take a sweet cake, some oil, some wine, an olive branch, walk slowly up to the temple, tap the road dust off my sandals, then between the cool pillars, place the offering at the feet of the golden goddess; silent somewhere between thanks and praise and the place called prayer; and then I’d return home, peaceful as if blessed. A more poetic image? Perhaps it’s the same place: the mind was there, the body’s here. It’s good. You were there too.