unwritten summer poem - David Beckman

[Larry Robinson]

unwritten summer poem


digs underground to five feet, skirts a 33-degree Fahrenheit aquifer and turns 
left at a mole crossing

hides in mushroom-and-lichen-lined tunnel where millipede and ferret 
wrestle, disturbing the peace

probes northwest where three badgers and a chipmunk make competing
offers on groundhog two-bedroom

questions decision to stay below for the long haul

does a 180 to upward trajectory in hope that air will give clarity

breaks into open and implores convocation of irises to suggest an identity: 
sonnet? villanelle? haiku? other?

they request 11 unrhymed lines, the longest having 35 words and the 
shortest, two -- oh, and five question marks

knows writing is hard enough without those absurd requirements

burrows down again to rest and think: travel all the way to earth's core where 
silence should be complete and poetry unneeded or rise again to surface and 
in spite of everything get to work?

heads up again to chance 

the light.

		- David Beckman