I have stared out
through this window before.
Many times.
Who knows
the sums of such things?
I was there this morning,
a fresh mug of coffee
sending the aroma of waking
up from the table beside me.
Yesterday, the trees
were the waving arms
of children at a parade.
The sunrise was
a golden flood.
In Winter, the finches
were the ghosts of Spring.
The frozen pond
a tomb for the sky.
The Christmas cactus was
the ebon night above us
on The Fourth of July, and
the hill which lifts this house
fell away from the porch
like the falter toward eternity.
But on this day,
the glass is only glass.
The rain is only the rain.
This morning is but the
last of last night.
The cats are just cats.
The leaves of the laurel
look as they do, and
I am only a man
in an old robe,
cradling a cooled cup,
capped pen in his pocket,
and likely to be late
for work.
At Hard Labor
I suppose I am grateful
that writing a poem
is not like mining sulfur
from the banks of a volcano
or welding a crossbeam
miles above the street.
Nor is it like
erecting a dreamhouse.
Most days, it is more
like splicing a phone line,
or hanging a door
on a linen closet.
Afterall, we live
in a world of toiling,
sweeping the dust
from the steps,
only to find them
wanting once more.
Wiping the gray mud
from our boots, then
walking out into the
field again at morning.
I have never
invited these poems, yet
they keep on arriving
one by one, shaking
the rain
from their shoulders
as they emerge from
the dark beyond my door.
I suppose I am grateful
that they did not
rob my house
or steal my children
from their
very beds.
Writing a poem
is not like
rising at first light
to cook for an army,
but more like
waking at ten on Sunday
to prepare an omelet
for someone you really love,
or teaching a small child
to lace up a shoe.
It is the dancers I pity,
who must aspire
to leap and spin, and
the painters who must
live with the burn of
turpentine in their veins.
What of the man
near the park, who stands
on the best days and the worst
turning chestnuts over tiny coals.
Or the waitress
who must always
be concerned with
what I want to drink.
Writing a poem is not
like any of that, I think.
But enough, the rain
is ferocious tonight,
So much that I fear
the hills will be washed away,
And if I am not mistaken,
there may be someone
at
my door.
—Daniel Thomas Moran (2002)