I finish book drafts,
a dedication, footer-pagination. 
I tuck and roll
a few final arrangements

neatly justified.  Suburban life
similar in its style
manuals stream-lining formal
editing and copy.  Writing

a respite with current
change in the air. 
Shrinking margins offer burial
and discounts on ritual

exorcism.  I frequently overuse
words – blood, song, “light” –
sometimes cradles the unborn
fragments of memory dimmed

by moratorium and cerebral
hemorrhage, a loose wire
arcing toward a conductor.
Words write the sheet

music into formal stanzas
of form, no exit
strategy called for.  Pause
on a quiet morning

gives words a taste
like I freshly-picked
medicine off the vine. 
Afternoon sestinas drive hard

bargains.  Patterns of fruit
stall the escape from
liberal media driven to
poetry’s formality in truth

regardless of which side
wags the proverbial god.
Silence tempts the quicksand.
All the unwritten poems

I’ve yet to write
share in the common
good in seeing prayer
a dedicated spectacle, watching

my hesitant step while
promising to say and
whenever I decide to
leave a thought unfinished.

– Marc Meierkort