| Poetry This thing made itself It flowed out of my pen Like a tide Pulled full by the moon And here on the paper It looks like a wound An insult to the endless promise Of all the other things A clean new page can become Within the alphabet Words dissolve like salt Ink and pulp Trade meanings in the night Rearrange themselves With seeming free will So that this thing This work of accidental art Flows and ebbs Waxes and wanes And refuses to explain itself I claim it mine By right of pen ownership And paper dominion I stamp it with my name But I cannot own it Though I was there At the moment of creation And I held The maternal pen It has taken on a living form And the lines can leap From page to page to page Infecting marriage licenses And grocery coupons And thoroughbred pedigrees Like ancient wisdoms Passed from age to age It will escape this ink Slip out into the night Pulled full by the moon And will return in time Changed by what it's seen A healed scar on other paper Stamped with another name Reeds It is the music That teaches words To speak Without need for breath Or tongue In strange inky grammar Dotted with shrubs And underscore spiders Italics drawn toward the moon Metered in precision Fibonacci Divided by minnows Raised to the power of stone Invariant in print With granite patience Awaiting a reader The music schools the poem In the art of being heard Rae Spencer Rae Spencer is a writer and veterinarian living in Virginia. Her poetry has been published in Melusine, The Driftwood Review, Five Fishes Journal, vox poetica, Triggerfish Critical Review, and elsewhere. She received a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2009. Art ~ William Whitaker |
