It Is Dark (2) Poem by RIC BASTASA

like a highway buckled by a heat wave
so does a poem warps time like a yarn
arranged lengthwise on a loom and then
crossed by a woof, your body shape
twisted by the way i look at some distance,

you know it, you sit there and begin to write
the words, it was still 3 o'clock in the afternoon
when the people speak of arrivals and then
departures, and then you finally finish your
poem, carefully weaving and weighing and
asking which word fits what you want to drive
to the niche of your dead thoughts or to the
womb of the birth of your fertilized words

suddenly, the clock strikes 7: 09 in the evening
you forget dinner, you forget the birthday party
of a friend, you have forgotten time, and yet you
are so alive, like the stars in your window that
now have started to appear like fireflies on a
very lonely tree. You close the door. It is dark.