Why I Write Before First Light
That dark before the dawn is too quiet,
hanging above the house and the treetops,
which my small frail light fails to penetrate.
Cups of coffee, dollops of cream, I breath
the steam before I sip. Then sift through
the words I want to use, laying them down
thick as bricks. The trick is to let this self-
imposed solitude drift through themes and memes
and glean some new meaning. Meanwhile, the sky
lightens, leaves and trunks of trees differentiate
one from the other and some small bird, a wren
or chickadee, begins to sing, signals
the end of my poem, my wall of words,
made small by this wall of sound made by birds.