Once in a long, long while, the thunderbolt…. coming through complete, my job not to foul it up, just hang on and stay out of the way
But usually, in the car alone driving through cattle fields and the Green Swamp, catching the dawn red-handed on the way to work, on a yellow pad scrawled from the need to watch the road
Playing with images the way a cat plays with a mouse, sneaking up, pouncing, tossing them into the air, and watching them scamper
finally settling down to crunch their bones and chew and savor, coughing up the occasional hairball
Sometimes, a fleeting image comes, embedded in dull, bovine, slatternly words with large flat feet and stringy hair
They remain, witless, where I push them; living fences to hold the image till I harvest it
Afternoons, before the home commute, I reread, groaning, laughing; a hunter who smells the game, and knows who’s got the gun
Finally, momentum builds, words come together; smooth against my tongue, singing in my throat
the only sweet I crave
(I see that this program messes up the line breaks in poetry, but I hope the commas help)
Ann Dickinson Sargent 