Scribo Scribere

This very night, late into the night,

in my bed before sleep, after a meeting of friends,

I lie keenly awake reading a book under the covers,

not wanting the day to end.

Because, tonight, I met someone who moved my soul.

I know only his name and where he is from.

All else is not yet clear to me but may be in time.

We shared a laugh, we talked of music,

we looked at poems traded in a group.

I had some of the profoundest thoughts

I am ever likely to have access to in my time.

And then, when I came back home,

I threw my bag on the floor, my coat on the rack,

changed into pajamas, warmed up my bed.

I got my notebook out. I wrote a verse

while watching a documentary on medieval scriptoria.

But there is something else that stirs within me now.

A force of nascent love and wonder.

I can deal with, regulate, my feelings through poetry alone.

What a great, grand joy it is, at times throughout the day

to think of nothing else but the stirrings of deep-set feelings,

the slow grab of emotion, and to be sucked in by them a little.

No, I do not want to go to bed tonight.

No, nor any other night.

How can I, feeling what I do, ranging

out into the dusky, ill-trod expanses

that are the domain of this emotion I encounter?

I want only to lie and think a while longer.

Please, let me wonder the night away!