In The Dawn's Dull Early Light Poem by gershon hepner

Some poems like a meteorite
may dazzle when they fall,
but in the dawn’s dull early light
can anyone recall
the brightness of the sky at night,
and when the sun begins
to rise with colors that delight,
can anyone convince
the ones who never saw the sight
that happened as you wrote,
attributing your words to sleight,
like grace without a note?


Diane Ackerman writes that she used to write poems daily to corral the unruly emotions that arose during intense psychotherapy. She writes:

Poems arrive as meteorites.
Collecting them, I try my best to impart
impulses, the Morse code of the heart,
but I do not understand the vernacular
of fear that jostles me until art occurs,
or why knowing you from afar
spurs hours of working myself into the stars.
Well, I do know, but I fight its common sense:
I try to stabilize us through eloquence.
It's an old story, better told than I tell,
how artists shape what hurts like hell
(usually love) into separate empires
of lust, tenderness, and lesser desires

6/4/02