A Summer Evening - Estopped on the Library Steps

I suppose it can be viewed as a somber occasion when a poet announces that he or she has decided to forego future prompts and henceforth to live life averse.  But in truth I feel a certain lightness and freedom.  Now I'm just another ex-poet struggling for recovery, trying to kick myself of the habit of writing free verse.  Eight beats to the line, 12 steps more to try and keep things from getting any worse.

Of course I still have my translation habit to fall back on - a bit like methadone maintenance I suppose.  I can get all the high I need by spending an hour a day with the greater and lesser Tang poets.  But from now on - at least for the foreseeable future - everything I have to say for myself is going to be confined strictly to the purest of prose.

To brush with such a fine touch

When there’s barely enough me

To give the air itself wing

As if my thoughts could be

Directly intuited

By someone on the

Far side of the street

It’s a season of estoppel

The Staples store

On the nearest corner

Has nothing to offer

For the usual poetic means

Too late for call slips

Any hope for autopoiesis 

Tonight will only arrive

By way of my dreams

I’m left with no more than

The posterior view of Patience

(or is it Fortitude) and

The unvarnished truth

That silence bears 

Equal measures of
Devise divine and demise