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The Choice
Come on, you can't stay there in bed,
Not when a poem's ready to climb like Dracula
From its coffin or burst like a fluttering dove
From under the magician's hands.
Oh, come on, you can't stay there in bed,
Not when house-bound children are eager
To run through flower-strewn meadows,
Or dash across traffic without looking.
But we like things exactly where they are,
Tied up in their sinews and braced by bones,
We like lying curled under the soft duvet
It's warm and so peaceful - we'd choose
Not to get up, to clamber sleepily downstairs,
To grab pen and paper, to drop into the car
Roaring its Formula 1 engine on the grid
Before it races away, not thinking then -
As we negotiate the chicanes of words -
Of all those eyes that will never see them,
Of all the unstarted or unfinished poems
That disappear into other poets' lives like cats.
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