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Page 243

From time to time a poem comes to me.
I can see it coming a long way off, though,
at first, I may not recognize it as a poem.

From such a distance, it's hard to tell
what it is or even that it's moving, much less
moving towards me. Perhaps it's just a bump
on the horizon that I hadn't noticed before,
a rock or stump or pile of dead leaves.
Or, on a hot day, an illusion, a slight bend
in the horizon's arc caused by heat waves.

But look, it's bigger than it was a moment ago.
Yes, it's definitely coming towards me – collision course!
Is it a person? My old dog come to greet me,
leap up and lick my face again and again?
Trees from Macbeth gone astray? Hard to say –

it still has no form I can perceive, though
when I squint, it takes on many forms,
shifting among them as the intensity of squint
varies. I know it is coming to me, because
if I try to move out of its path, it changes course
accordingly.

It is huge now, towering, only a block away,
yet still vague, hard to delineate – is that a face
or the pattern of veins on a dead leaf or breasts,
navel and bearded groin of a giant nude...?

No, it's much smaller than I thought, must have been
near me from the start, the distance an illusion –
no more than a gnat dive-bombing my eyeball,
almost part of the eye's moist surface...it's...
it's here, suddenly is huge again. It has
come to me. I still can't make out its form;

but from within it, I can see you
with renewed clarity.

(I guess this is a poem that came to me.
Now I wish it would come to. C'mon, poem,
Wake up!)

(Reminds me of the story of the six blind poets
and the simile.)

Note: Stanza 3: "Trees from MacBeth gone astray" – at the end of MacBeth a forest (used as mobile camouflage by an army) moves. This fulfills part of a prophecy, that no one will kill MacBeth until a certain forest moves from a certain place to a certain place. But perhaps some of those trees are still wandering.

Stanza 5: "Only a block away" – perhaps writer's block?

The last stanza alludes to the story of the six blind men and the elephant, each describing the elephant he touched ("like a snake" says the one who touched the trunk, etc.).

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