Subject Matter

What would I write about if I didn’t have you
to write about? I suppose I would do
what poets did a thousand years ago
and write of kings and wars and try to show
how the sword was mightier than the pen
when the opposite was true, even then.

I suppose I might look out the window
and doodle people passing down below
imagining that I could see traces
of secret sorrow in happy faces.

Perhaps I’d just write portraits of myself?
“A forty-something man in decent health”
though pretty soon I think you’d find it weird;
“Another villanelle about his beard?”

An epic meditation on a leaf?
In Autumn they could have a stanza each.
The longest nature poem ever seen
till I ran out of words to rhyme with green.

So many topics waiting for my pen
to discover them someday but, till then,
my pen only wants to write about you
so if you don’t mind, that’s what I shall do.