Secret Poem 

When I sit down to write, the poem walks me around the block three times, then back to my room. The poem turns off the lights. The poem puts on the Adrianne Lenker song about not wanting to talk about anything. The poem says, Look! I look out the window which holds another window, in which my neighbor is a tiny shape of a person at a desk, head bowed. I look until the looking grows tired. The poem lays me in bed and I sleep the whole night through. The poem wakes me past noon. We get ready. The poem walks me to the train, which we ride to the end of the line. There's an old couple on the train and one of them has fallen asleep on the other even though it's three in the afternoon now and it makes me want to believe in love. It makes the train break down. While we're waiting for the next train to come, I watch a kid skate back and forth amongst the bored and tired people. I think, the poem could teach me that, maybe? But the poem has other plans. The poem forgets where we were going, that we have work to do. The poem catches us a ride home with a friend, a poet. In the friend's car, I talk about my ideas for the poem, and the friend nods and says they are good ideas. The poem is thrilled. The sun is setting and as we drive under the highway overpass the red light flickers here and here across the poem's blushing face. When we reach our destination, I have to coax the poem out of the car. It doesn't want to get back to work. So we walk—my friend, the poem, and I—around the block three times, then again. My friend asks, Can poetry save us? We’re walking past the community garden and the elementary school on the corner where the children are boarding their buses. Because it’s winter, all the plants are small and dry and school lets out in the dimming light. I say, I don't know. This all just takes me closer to where I’m headed anyway. Except yesterday when the poem stopped me in the middle of the street, all the cars moving around us, it seemed like the poem knew a different place. Not this warm flicker nor the cold light kissing our faces so tenderly but never enough.