“…poetry isn’t revolution but a way of knowing why it must come.” —Adrienne Rich, “Dreamwood”

Why It Must Come
(After Adrienne Rich)

The one great choice
is made instinctively,
there is no manual
no set of directions.
The hand-me-down desk
has no typewriter or even
a pen and paper. The poet
needs none of it.
Possibilities birth in the brain,
its crevices filled with currents
and hot-air balloons flying
with ideas.
The poem is the possibility
of a myriad of choices.
To create the poem is
the one great choice.

*****

So it’s the last day of National Poetry Month and I’m serendipitously ending it with a poem about poetry. Funny how that worked out. I didn’t write every single day thus month but I did for a good many of them. I’m grateful for the prompts provided by several websites and writers and the opportunities to stretch myself a little bit.