of floods and gates and droughts

the poet’s lament?

Photo by Timo C. Dinger on Unsplash

some days
i’ll sit to write and the words come
freely—as if some invisible floodgates 
were 

o      p      e      n     e      d.

         there                 can                    be  
            thousands            of            words, 
   like             millions             of              gallons
              a          second,     flowing      through.       
      all       very 
                               noisy       and      wanting
                    to           be           noticed
if        not      
                            caught.

once a flood like that is started,
it is hard to stop. 
i only need to stay out of the way for 
fear of drowning.

(i 
miss 
some 
words 
as 
they 
flow 
quickly 
by
though,
never 
to 
be 
heard 
from 
again;

beautiful words that would have been nice to capture.)
 
other days,
not so much. other days
the struggle to find words is real. 
i keep listening until i give up. the silence
only indicating drought.
yet drought happens, sometimes. 
why bother then when there is so much else
i should be doing? and besides,
the headache and thirst are never worth it.

today,
only these came through the mysterious gates;
this trickle. 

i’ll wonder how i’ll feel about these,
later…

i have other things that need doing now
and i know it’s always raining somewhere.

---

~ k