surrounded by thirty-eight volumes of poetry
diverse as the centuries of art history
I prime my mind, heart, fingers, tongue
for this final lap around the verse-arena
Borges, Natalie Goldberg, and Leonard Cohen
cheer me on in echoes from beyond;
Samuel Taylor Coleridge has brought
his ministry of frost, sailing a Dover thrift edition;
Kit Stokes helps me navigate broken music
while my fingers attempt the right keys;
Yeats was brought into this via reference
in the latest Poetry as well as from
Mary Kinzie’s poet’s guide to poetry;
Rimbaud tried to French me, but my mood
remains Latin – I searched for Neruda,
but his captain’s verses remain lost in the stacks.
Shelley asked me earlier why it is
I have such a hard time with Wordsworth,
more often than not calling him Wadsworth
and I have no excuse but for divergence
and a memory sacrificed for imagination.
Bukowski is passed out on the floor after
punching me several times – Sandberg
insists on grieving with me, though he’s going
on about another laborer in Chicago . . .
moments of silence punctuate the click of keys
as I pause now and again to search phrases
like some proverbial magpie raiding for bright
bits of shiny to weave into my nappy nest.
looking back through these neonate lines,
I suddenly feel as though I have merged
into a mural on the wall of a Barnes & Noble.

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