Of Courtyards: i remember when my poems were things untouched:

i remember when my poems were things untouched:

they sat strewn across my floor on lined pages

torn from notebooks where numbers and definitions

and other nonpoems were written, at the time written

as busy works, freedom from enlightenment in things

i wished not to bear in my own

they stayed away from the eyes of Muses, thinking me

hopeless, wondering if their words would ever dance

in the eyes of the darlings for whom they were made,

hoping that their purpose would come as wooing

(useless wooing, nonetheless)

they remained unchanged, stern in their wake,

thinking their perfections as all, thinking their

all as perfections, thinking that no stranger's

eyes and mouth would make their form anew, would

take their words askew, would drip their inks

upon crumpled pages and change the slightest

slight thing

alas, now, my poems are touched

again

and now these poems ache for touch

Of Courtyards