Poetry is verdant – in spring
it is born from each raindrop, each
ray of light falling on the ground.
How much room do we have for them
between a morning and an evening
or upon a page in a book?
But now, in autumn when black clouds
slide low above us, brushing
high-tension pylons and crows
dozing there in the dusk, because
there is hardly day at all, the night is
two long black fingers holding day
and us in a grip so tight we barely have
room to breathe or think. Everything I write
is in spite of this weight
that comes, comes again, wanting
to plunge us into sleep,
into the dreams of decaying leaves and grassroots
and of the earth itself where
all our unthought thoughts and unborn poems hide.
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