Don’t ask me …

Don’t ask me;

I have no recipe

for a poem. You

know the language,

know where prose ends

and poetry begins.

There should be no

introit into a poem.

The listener should come

to and realise

verse has been going on

for some time. Let

there be no coughing,

no sighing. Poetry

is a spell woven

by consonants and vowels

in the absence of logic,

Ask no rhyme

of a poem, only

that it keep faith

with life’s rhythm.

Language will trick

you if it can.

Syntax is words’

way of shackling

the spirit. Poetry is that

which arrrives at the intellect

by way of the heart.