writer’s block

writer’s block

you paint mountains with black ink,

back bent from the task’s rigor

white paper cracking, green noise

the fan blowing overhead. at night,

you count styrofoam stars

on the ceiling above. what is a poet

without colors, vibrant shades to quelch

the quotidian disposition?  words fail

as they always do, a vertitable constant

as the sweat stain on your back

on summer afternoons when i forget you’re a mere

figment, a whisper floating in the leaden air.

the memory remains uneffaced…your dress of green lace,

the way you curled your finger around a wisp of hair

which you whipped in waves of aureate light,

but by night you were a bird, a long-billed crane

floating over the lifeless water in the languid evening rain.