To Make a Poem Live

Athens, Georgia

June 14, 2011; revised January 6, 2015

A million poems that might be made,

and each one phrased a million ways  –

but one is said, the others dead

and never more than fleeting thoughts

that twitter past mind’s eye half read

and gone, but one that lingers on

defines the mind that gives it life.

In minds there lurk a million states

expressing thought a trillion ways –

within each moment one congeals,

the others hover not yet real

left hanging from a golden thread

that loops through mind outside of time

to bind the poems we thought were dead.

The hand that writes a poem down

and makes it real outside the mind,

a concrete form that’s fossilized

in frozen death until it’s said

aloud or read by kindred souls,

in thought to make the poem live

and resurrect my mind from thread –

A million lines that I might write

all fight for life outside my head

to die and rise when thought anew –

the few I love and bring to life,

I gently leave their fate to you

for that, dear soul, is why I write, 

that song is why I live.