I wake up early on a Friday morning after a broken sleep but for some reason, the two first words of the poem were lodged in my head, so I write them down immediately and make breakfast. It’s an unusually warm, almost spring-like 7 degree November day so I decide to take advantage of the weather and walk the dogs longer along a nearby forest path emerging from the trees to a luminous pink sky in the east. I sit down at my desk and continue to write out freehand the lines as they make sense — even the name comes easily to mind.
It’s not anything special, but there’s nothing pantywaist about poetry — it really is the best words in the best order, as you perceive them.
Time please
Inexorable creep,
Likes when I sleep,
Summoning demon to my witching hours.
Dripping taps, slow ticking clocks,
Rose petalled dawns light clouds in flocks.
As counting sheep, we pray to keep,
Our waking hours, and smell the flowers.
But all too soon, in gathering gloom,
With time has crept, a darker bloom.
The hour is late; it’s time to sleep.
