Anyone Could Find It

The Ancient Modern

Anyone Could Find It  /  Joshua Alan Sturgill         

Don’t be angry, my love.
You suspect withholding; 
you seek, in the details
of my routine, deception.
But beginnings
are universally inscrutable.  
Search all the pockets
of my soul.  Search my eyes.
You’ll find no secret book 
of phrases, no incantation 
for conjuring those rare
instances of rhyme.
All the poetry 
is free in open meadows
under the midday sky.
Anyone could find it where
it waits, and lift it out — 
a little essence
a little bird, a field mouse
harried by a predator, or
wounded under Winter’s knife.
I admit, I warm it 
only just so in my open hand
and send it off where it will go.
Then I return to you
in the unmarked night.
I wake beside you
empty-handed.  Don’t be angry,
my love.  I am not a tradesman;
I am a wanderer.  I have
only what I observe

All poetry and supplementary material: copyright 2021 by Joshua Alan Sturgill. All rights reserved.