! ! A Poem's Prehistory Poem by Michael Shepherd

When the poem has at last
been brought to birth,
I rest, or stand, as both proud parents do,
blessed by the loving bed;

but I love too, the memory
of what brought being to this poem:
the seeming insignificant events of the day,
that neighboured with some memory;
that chimed with books half read;
which joined half-thoughts together like new-stringed white pearls,

and then spoke in some wordless tongue
and mental paintings without form
somewhere in mind;

and behind it all
the briefest flashes of the workings of the world…
and wonder; awe.