Wednesday Poems: This is the poem

Wednesday, like any day, is the perfect day for poetry. This week's poem is a poem about a poem.


This is the poem

that stumbles over itself
falling at odd intervals into oblivion

It is not
trendy or clever or fierce
It is not much more
than a puff of smoke
from a cigarette

It needs an image
that holds allure--
the left ear of a cat, say
or the crannies in an English muffin--
something it could use
to jump into a universal truism
about love and justice and death

It has no purpose
and the passion which fueled it into being
has been spent,
leaving it with nothing,
a coin in a beggar's pocket--
small change that won't change
anything.

The repository of voices unsung
is populated by poems
like this one

whatever it was they once wanted to say
is nothing more than the echo
of water splashing
in the bottom of a well.