The mind takes a break
When I am lost
for words to write
I reach for the poems
of Wallace Stevens
and allow my mind
to drift in his obsessions
two figures in the dark night
the voice of the moment
and the place in which
he has Florida in his ear
and always the singularity
of the eye that builds
from what it sees
a world of the imagination
I think of his restless fingers
and his rule of thumb :
say it and it shall be
the conceiving words
from which he constructs
a composite of reality
Below Key West
there’re stars I’ve never seen
and on the roof of a rusty barn
there are buzzards
crouched in anticipation
there are palm trees
etched against the blue-black sky
and there is a full moon
with nothing to reveal
other than itself
Finally there is the sea
sleeping in silence in the bay
and this silence I tell you
is such a welcome serenade
John Lyons