Writing Poetry's Hard Stuff

Writing poetry's hard stuff,
but not writing it can sometimes be even harder.
The words spill forth like a burst dam,
and nothing can stop
it, no mop
big enough. The best you can do is sop
it up
with gray rags and a rusty tin pail
from the cracks in the concrete on the front walk, but to little avail.
Don't use your Mom's best towels, however,
or she might write
a few poems
of her own.
If the sun is shining, some will evaporate
and you can find them later
in the wriggling tails of
the polliwogs in the murky pond,
prismatic rainbows created by the ripples
they fashion
from the marriage of algae and sunlight.
You can find poetry in the
condensation on the bottom of a mottled leave,
in the ragged cotton tatters of clouds
raked across the azure sky
by the branches of very tall trees,
in the verdant green
of a caterpillar's polka-dotted overcoat,
big black eyes and a yellow flannel vest,
munching his lunch complacently,
and sometimes you can find it even
tracked inside
on the gray velvet paws of the cat
who now lies snoozing
the daylight away
on
your
unmade bed.
To avoid such messes in the future,
set a poetry trap.
Beside your bed,
open a clean composition book
and a wooded no. 2 pencil.
Each morning slam the book tight
to keep the poetry from enameling
your daytime,
for truly poetry belongs to the night,
black words like black bats,
have sonar
and can easily
navigate your dreams,
until it seems
that poetry
is your native language,
the only one you ever really spoke
with any ease at all.
Sometimes it seems
that poetry and dreams
are identical twins.
One seldom exists without the other.
Dreams, the Vehicle
and Poetry, the Interpreter.
Without Dreams,
Poetry would have
no means of transportation, and
nowhere
to go
at all.