i left
my five-walled room
because I couldn’t
find a poem there.
it wasn’t
tucked between
tissue-thin
bible pages
or sharing the dust on a windowsill
with cigarette packs and movie tickets.
it wasn’t hidden
in the booming voice
of a TV preacher
or buzzing on my radio
with “breakfast with the beatles.”
i searched for it
along sunny springtime streets
aglow
with skirt swirls
and children shrieks.
there is a wide deep river
where I live;
i looked for my poem
beneath its mud-brown waters;
its lazy flowing might
washed poetic dreams away.
i caught a bus, hoping to ride it
to my poem;
on a seat across from me,
a man in a cloud-colored suit
eyed my search
behind spread pages
of the sunday literature section.
a thin blonde page-boy woman
muttered what might’ve been my poem
into her cellphone.
i disembarked into a steamy day,
still missing my poem;
a voluptuous voice,
tropical like ethiopia
shouted
muffled words;
they were no poem; she was merely hawking
-David Harris