To Find a Poem

 

Plant words in the dirt with bare hands.

Write seeds on the page,

gently dig a hole for the roots to expand,

pull the margins around the seedlings.

Cross out the weeds with a red pen

water and fertilize tiny shoots

chase out the chipmunks, the bunnies and the sweetness.

Spray soap on leaves of letters

to slide off and kill the critics and aphids.

Be willing to chop off 

the extra branch or phrase, 

pull out those extraneous adjectives –

burn the adverbs

harvest some prose 

or if lucky a poem.