To Bang a Nail

I see a nail, I bang it in.

I contemplate the daily news.

A steady hand, a jutted chin,

and when I listen to the Blues,

I only hear a strummed guitar

and some old black guy wailing.

I drive a boring family car.

How I love to bang a nail in!

But now I’ve read some poetry,

deep water is disturbed somewhere -

I watch the wind dance in a tree

and find I’m thinking of your hair

and how it dances in the breeze.

My steady hand begins to shake -

Why should I stop to look at trees?

Why does the Blues make my heart break?

And in a rose I see your face,

each passing cloud’s a ship in sail.

I find I’m staring into space.

Ah, who has time to bang a nail?

For now I find I’m writing too -

at least one poem every day.

Ignoring what I ought to do,

reality drifts far away.

It gradually occurs to me,

as all these clouds go sailing by,

I’ve lost my mind to poetry

and when I hear the Blues, I cry.

Perhaps this is the poets’ curse?

A fragile mind of grief and woe

which feeds on chaos for its verse.

I think of Plath or Lowell or Poe

whose dismal stories are so sad.

What spectres were they fighting?

Did writing poems drive them mad

or does madness drive the writing?