Ars Poetica 3

Your friends tell you the writing

is good but you’re not actually buying it—

so much idle conversation, you think,

overheard through a hotel window

by a cab driver half asleep in the sun

instead of an ode or a psalm—

and waiting near the ER for your wife

who has just broken her arm,

reading a translation of Hafez or Tagore

can make you feel godless and small

since you’re not Neil Young or Francois Villon

though on such a day or night as this

you hear the footsteps along the sidewalk

and here comes the old shadow again

like the promise of late-season rain

which you hope will keep falling

into the earth, its rivers and deserts,

its alleys and streets

and the wild and wastrel ocean.