If you go looking for me sometime after dark
I’m out with my flashlight, hunting for a snark,
a perfect metaphor for an imperfect poem
so I can bag it briskly and bring it home,
a perfect metaphor, so rare and so apt
that captures the mood, the Magnificat
of the vision splendid I hope to impart,
the perfect, perfect metaphor somewhere in the dark.
There’s someone walking around
inside my head
padding around in his slippers
wondering
what to do with himself:
should he write a poem?
read another chapter of ‘The Freedom Circus’ ?
write a witty comment
on Beth’s ‘Wild Sounds’?
What?
Another episode of ‘Father Brown’?
it wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t flush
the toilet so often
or go to the fridge.
Look, it’s ten o’clock, I say to him,
could you please
settle down
so I can get some sleep?
John Malone 