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Page 22

Stop listening
to rain on the roof.
The blank page.

Yes, those pictures
are still on that wall.
The blank page.

Whatever is in
the refrigerator...still
the blank page.

The rain has stopped.
You've seen sunshine before.
The blank page.

Write something. OK,
the letter "T". Now what?
Maybe an "h". An "e"?

I've said "the" before.
This page is no good now.
Start a blank one.

The blank page.
The blank page.
The blank page.

Car noise. An airplane.
No bird sound, not even crows.
A blank page.

The blank page.
A voice leaps out.
Mind ripples.

Note: This series of haiku (more or less haiku – I always try to anticipate the "Good, but it's not Perrier" school of haiku critics) concerns a poet's attempts to cope with the blank page before him – letting distractions pull him from his efforts to write (which efforts are perhaps the real distractions from the writing itself) – rain sounds, pictures on the wall, desire to snack, etc., the page's blankness becoming obsessive, and eventually becoming him, so that he, now blank, begins to fill up with what surrounds him, and now someone new, begins to speak on the page. Something like that. I know it's a terrible thing to offer explanations, but it's also fun. I like to explain, as long as I don't HAVE to.

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