Frozen Lake

 

Can you remember that first day of December,

When words for which you went searching

Deferred to quietude,

As you stabbed, with your pen,

The surface of your notebook's frozen lake?

 

No matter how hard you grasped the shaft,

How much force you applied to the balled tip,

You couldn't make a dent,

Let alone penetrate to depths where notions swim.

Your backed-up brain throbbed with pain.

 

In utter frustration and exhaustion,

You snapped the clear plastic pick in two,

Threw the pieces down.

Once you had gone, the ice melted from that lake;

Its waters swarmed with ideas you'd never catch.

 

 

 

 

Wound Up

 

Some days, he gets going so fast

He could almost mistake himself for a turbine,

Converting tons of river into electricity,

Rather than a rickety waterwheel beside a canted mill,

Groaning below the trickle of a sleepy stream,

Barely turning his aging body and mind

In lazy circles, from sunrise to twilight.

 

How he still lets himself get so wound up

Is a mystery to him, a miracle, a tribute to his vigor,

A testimony to his joie de vivre, purposeful insanity,

With a degree of discipline mixed in.

It has to be that going fast still exhilarates him,

Adrenalizes his cells, makes his flesh quiver

As if suspended in extended orgasm.

 

Grateful for this gift, privilege, wisdom,

He probes his original visions,

In search of poetic bits and pieces

He might use to fashion something sacred, from scratch -

The next Sistine Chapel ceiling, Macbeth,

Polio vaccine, Stealth bomber, silicon chip,

Map of the human genome's terra incognita.

 

All it takes to power his psyche

Is the slightest trace of a measure, a word-chime.

In such a dynamo-throe, he goes wild,

Demands that his senses arouse themselves,

Assume the shapes of symbol, image, metaphor,

Bring his singing to climax, his dancing to closure.

He's addicted to the essence of creation.