Could they hear me at the desk oozing prose onto the page,
clipping hard at the keys for grammar,
few words and blank space,
giving my all just for free writing?
Had they known my walk through the pre-day skyway,
the negative eighty degree cooler I passed—I am like that: cool and old.
Had they been blinded by a window’s reflection
or kissed their love before exiting a truck?
Could they feel the concentration,
the poise,
the inspiration,
of each line, in each book
held in heavy hand?
White came black, black came red—what you read this heap (?),
red turned pale, then yellow, then green—the fear, coming out of me.
This was it,
the beginning of the end,
and I had just opened Word
to give my fingers a stretch.
How coffee, how Grape-Nuts, how banana,
how milk, how ab workouts and a tepid shower
had been the muse to it all.
My body in the morning, my morning.
They hadn’t known.
Or at least that’s what I thought.
