Your Small Bag Poem by Daniel Brick

A Fantasy for Anne

Where have you placed it?
Perhaps in the Garden of Peace
in your neighborhood, tended
by old and young volunteers.
If you placed it there
on a quiet morning, with only
the early birds accompanying you,
it will shine brighter than the reddest
rose petals, or display a light
from within more penetrating
than the light of sunflowers.

Or did you wedge it carefully
in the soft bark of a flowering tree
so that breezes will fan the leaves
over its secrecy? Of course, if you
could stretch your arm and bend
a branch of a poplar near the entrance,
you could stash it in a wren's nest,
nestled among her brown-spotted eggs.

There are so many possibilities!
Everyday you stop by the stream
that flows past the Temple, and you
bow your head for a moment of pure calm.
You could safely place it between two rocks
just below the rushing water. Such cleansing
will keep your bag forever untarnished.

Or you could pay homage to those you love,
and put it in a bookcase in your home,
in which each of those beloved relatives
houses a favorite book that guides them
safely and truthfully through their days and nights...

But be careful not to imitate the behavior
of squirrels I watch from my balcony. They
stash their winter acorns all over my yard
and then forget. In winter now they scurry
everywhere in search of their lost food.
Oh, beware especially of an unworthy poet,
who has squandered her talent, made no effort
to improve her skills, and misuses poems
with words as weapons aimed against others.
What if she finds your bag of inspiration?
What if she steals what the Muse has given
to you, and perverts those gifts?

Oh, Anne, keep that bag - that precious gift
every poet needs - close to your heart,
where your truth and goodness reside. You
have never required a disguise of your essential self.
And your bag from the Muse requires no concealment.
Reach inside it, take the first inspiration
that curls around your hand, and bring it forth.
We, your avid readers, will patiently wait for that next poem!