I don’t like this poem.
It wandered away from me,
Like a dog off its leash
Free to explore the neighborhood unsupervised,
While I was sitting here wishing I could write like
King David or W. H. Auden or Langston Hughes and
Making little galloping-horsey sounds by
Thumbing my fingers on the keyboard
Without actually pushing down on the buttons.
I started after the leggy little thing,
(Which for some odd reason, desires freedom instead of
My Perfect Will for Its Life)
but I turned away from it
for just a minute
to tell the kids (for the seventeenth time today) to do their math.
It just got up in a huff and left, (apparently quite offended)
without even so much as a “By your leave”.
I can still see the leash flapping behind it in the wind
Like the tail of an unmanned kite.
How rude.
I tried to entice it back to me,
I promised to give it my Undivided Attention
(Like mothers have any of that)
But it knows I can’t keep that ridiculous promise.
I wonder how Real Poets fence in Brilliant Thoughts
And trap them forever onto the page.
I can’t even seem to find my pen now.
Stupid thing is playing hide-and-seek with me.
oh, shoot, the boy just ran in dripping in mud.
Good night, Irene, the laundry around here is never-ending. I should buy Tide by the pallet. It is a testimony to the generosity of God that there’s any mud actually left outside. You should see his face. There’s mud in his eyebrows. His eyebrows! I’m not even going to attempt to wash those sneakers…
“Boy, get back in that tub!”
…wait…
Where was I? Oh yeah…
My poem, yes. Where’d that thing go?
“Hey, kids, where’s my pen?”
My Deep and Profound Thoughts
That I am certain someone will uncover a hundred years from now
And publish for the Benefit of the Masses.
All right, concentrate. Think of a brilliant metaphor.
Think, think, think…
Brilliant metapho–”Mommy, mommy, will you read to us some more?”
