It Starts With a Whisper

A poem

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

Today, I am too tired
to write a poem, too exhausted
to wrangle something
from nothing, give a name
to that which lives
inside us all and make it
a friend.

My muse feels distant, just
beyond my grasp, a gray/white
cloud that hovers and haunts
the corner of my office
and doesn’t speak, but hums
a discordant melody I can’t
figure out how to translate.

Today I am too tired,
but yesterday and tomorrow
are my mirrors, so I pick up
my pencil, anyways, and try,
a pile of crumpled pages
half-filled with half-baked
lines to my left, an empty
trash can to my right.

Slowly, almost too faintly
to perceive, the discordance
becomes a steady chord, a whisper
I can finally hear, and my pencil
starts to move, a spritely dance
with the page that I’ll never
understand, and I’m left
with a poem about autumn
and dying (and fresh starts)
that I didn’t mean to write,
but I love.

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