You return to the same white space.

The same emptiness, as though it housed

the hanging gardens of Babylon between the thinnest

strands of blue. Lax filaments,           floating   

in time, tied to your need, your

drive to make meaning.

It’s absurd isn’t it?

Some days, the only thing you can make

sense of are the boundaries, the edges of skin and paper,

the distance separating you from the world

you love. You wrote and you wrote

until the ink spilled over,

flooded your head and your hands,

your feet and your prayers, drowning logic,

surfacing secrets, blurring lines.

Pages of poems blown high,

stanzas swept under foot, your narratives

torn and trampled.

          Poetry can save you!         

                                                     Poetry can destroy you!

When turned the wrong way, crafted into

a dagger, words can cleanly slice

the seams of a

quiet life.

Over-fed and under-pruned,

the passions,               they can consume you.

How do I find a steady voice again?

Dear Page,
Dear Words,
Dear Muse of 30 years,

build me a scaffold of iron. Corrugated lines

to lean upon, to lay my head against.

Let me write myself softly

into a poem

again.

Let me break through the lines

of a poem

again