The Poet is an Albatross

Like birds we are, migratory birds, eyes bright

gazing into and away from ourselves,

the ocean – spinning words teasing to be traversed;

cold currents swirling into white-foamed sentences, waves

of thought, of hunger, of homelessness, for we have no home

no place to remain, only the journey there and back again;

each flap of our enormous wings lifting us

or settling us again and always the smell of sound

calling to us, the inner compass begging us to try again

and again

and I feel sometimes

as if these wings have grown too heavy,

feathers frozen with salt air, the scent

a stinging rebuke -

failure

heavy as the laden atmosphere

for this solitary journey always appears

and finds a space between me

and those I hold dear.

I would like to rest,

to nest in a high mountain far inland

where I cannot hear the ocean,

allow my wings to fall mute

and rest in silence

but then a breeze catches my wings,

lifts a particle of me again into the air

and soon the words become the currents

and I am soaring again,

prescient with the image that I will land

(already the song of heaviness of that journey

anchoring me tiredly again)

but while I soar I give myself over

to look upon it all and try once more

to capture a feeling in a phrase,

the universe in a pause.