To a Poet

[billy]

i've been back to this one a few times. mainly trying to get a connect from poem to title and i think i get it but i'm struggling to see "the big picture" of it. i love some of the images.

"the desert of a page" is a whoop whoop image i wish i'd thought of.
i see the awe in your words. and how the 1st person would cherish the works of the poe. and i think there in lays the rub. the poem feels more about the love of words or books that a poet generic or other. stanza 5 i think is superb if about books. i'd like to see a connection to a poet. without the title there are only references to words and authors.

definitely a good poem for me, with lot's of original passages. though i feel either the title needs changing or something needs to be added in the poem to make a stronger connection (jmo) all just suggestion.

thanks for the read

Was I wrong to think
Jealousy was born in your words
And not in me?

Is your mind not the wave
I watch crash against the shallowness
Of those lips, the desert of a page?

I remember how you would talk
As I held
This very net
Over your voice
Only to see the words scurry through the line.

They are the words I want
To take from your attic
And frame in my museum, in my cage of glass;

Where you leave them
Unprotected, swallowed by dust and fingerprints,
I have the rags and polish,
The marble pedestal, the space;
Even a name for the room
Where they would sleep
In my house.

If I had those words,
We would share orange juice and sit
In the silence that comes
With finished labor every morning

Because
There would be
No more pens
And hours chasing shadows
From a desk.

No more scratches. No need for erasers;
Only a camera to take their picture
So years from now
I could say "Remember when,"
And laugh.

But instead,
I find your signature
Like fire in a dry wood
And my photographs burn into dreams.

I will have to keep
My place at the desk.

There will be
No end to this work
To have my name
Stitched to your words,

No end to the search
To have this written
Before you have the chance
To put it away
For good.