Wish Poem: After Hating Another Poem

So already, the other day I realized I hated the poem I was writing. 

Don't get me wrong: I had begun with a really good idea for a poem. But I'd taken that idea and tormented and twisted it to the point that it no longer resembled anything vaguely alive.

I felt like a cat* that had trapped a mouse in a basement corner two days ago and had been playing with it mercilessly ever since. The non-cat part of me finally just had to rear up and take control: first I caught the exhausted mouse, then I set it free in the tall grass at the edge of the yard.

Then, I sat down and wrote "Wish Poem" in fifteen minutes.

Give me poems 

that soar and rage,

 

steal the shadows,

steal the stage--

 

poems that get

right in your face,

 

waging peace

and spewing grace,

 

suffering children--

not fools gladly--

 

dripping wisdom,

loving madly.**

* Photo beneath Ellis, C. (2019). The night world's worth. https://www.vqronline.org/fiction/2019/09/night-world%E2%80%99s-worth. 

** With gratitude to and in memory of Larry Hill, the Presbyterian chaplain at Harvard who directed Waging Peace, a Harvard-based arms control group in the 1980s.