Tonight I discovered that a good poem starts with a feeling
that resists expression
and shrinks away from grammatical constructions, but
that might be coaxed from its shy hiding place
by language more musical, a metaphor, an image,
an usual rhetorical device, a graphical positioning of words on paper,
a way of mirroring itself onto the page other than via
straightforward literal description
and the methodical layering of logical arguments;
it needs to break the rules of proper speech
because it comes from the part of the brain more primitive
than the one that invented orderly sentences,
an utterance straight
from the alcove where dreams come from.
Or, to put it poetically…

     I speak to you now from
               the lobe where wolves first heard the idea to howl and birds to sing,
          the spring of moans and growls, the birthplace of words,
               the mind’s jungled recesses, an island peopled by snakes and apes,
          where rain falls up at times and feet sink into geese and clocks melt,
               where toilets aren’t private and teeth are loose,
          where longing and pain are wrenched into a crying out,
               a shaping of the lips, the tongue, the contours of the mouth
          into a gasp, a sound, into a name:
                    I am asleep
                         and seeking you.