a poem for today

Vessel

The poem comes to the man who is ready for her,

that famous poet said, the man who waits,

vessel, temple, emptied, open as dawn.

But how does a poem come to a woman?  The woman

who waits for a poem is scrubbing a floor, packing

lunches, vacuuming the study of the man who waits 

for a poem.  She is waiting for a poem wrapped

in an old bathrobe, listening to her child cough

in his sleep, waiting to see if  he’s well enough 

for school, or if her day of waiting will be spent 

playing parcheesi, wiping up spills, reading 

about samurai.  In the bluish dawn, gazing

into the silver kalanchoe hanging at the window,

she notices a cluster of drooping leaves--

does it need water, food, is the light too strong

for it?  The woman who waits for a poem lives

in a world calling her every instant:  Keep me alive!

Let her wake empty as a shell, blank as a coin 

rubbed over and over by the days, each dawn 

that world fills her, each dawn, etches her.

Sandra Kohler 

From Ars Poetica Feminae