Uncertainty
Uncertainty makes poetry. The true
Is not its aim. The bull’s eye isn’t part
Of what real poetry desires. Its blue
Is not quite blue: it is the blue of heart,
More glaucous than an azure sky, more like
The powdered bloom which grapes grow on their skin.
A sonnet does not yearn to be a spike.
A villanelle is not a rape or sin
Committed for that lust we call a thorn.
Instead the target is an unknown rose
That waits. It is a petal that has torn
The facts, a hardening lava that flows.
A line like crystal, firm and pure and fast
Is wrong. Instead we want an angler’s cast.