words_1

My Existential Poem About Snow

I sat in silence,
sharpened my pencil
and wrote on the straight gray lines.
The words lay flat and lazy from their long sleep
but I made them sit up and breathe
and then I moved them around
until, disorientated, they began to obey me,
remembering the tricks that once they knew.
And when I felt sure that the words would behave
I sent them, crocodile fashion,
to a man who knows about such things.
As I pressed the button
my heart flipped with anxious love
because they were only little, these words,
and they might forget how to tumble and turn
before this man from the world of artistes.
And I wished that I had left them bumping against each other
among the gray lines of the white page
where their laughter would not disturb anyone.
But the words danced and sang
with obedient, innocent clumsiness
and he wrote back with a smile.

And for that brief moment I thought myself
a choreographer, a conductor,
a poet.