A pencil follow you everywhere
like an unwanted foundling dog.
Bits of paper from shredded
poems spin to the floor
every time you stand.
You sit staring at the
river, bearing down, straining
to deliver a better word for "flow."
Metaphors elude you like
handsome strangers on
crowded foreign streets;
you wander to that place in
your mind that knows how to
parallel park, and remembers the green
glass cowboy boot you won at
the county fair, but find
nothing useful.
A thin blanket of pain unfolds
above your eyebrows.
You sigh, put your
pencil down and wait.
~Gail Mahr