This poem is set in a garden—more specifically
an enclosed garden, hortus conclusus,
where an angel will soon arrive to bestow a miracle.
I have a clear idea about how I want
the poem to begin and end (it is like a story
inside my head), but when my fingers press the keys
they type something different. This frustrates me.
I try again, but again I write the wrong thing. I write
more, hoping that my original idea will start
to take shape if I pour more into it.
The page is filling up, yet I seem to be moving
farther away from where I want to go. The dog growls
at a figure passing beyond the closed window
and I reach over to scratch the fur at the nape
of her neck, the vibrations passing from her body
into mine. Turning back to my laptop, I read over
the text as it appears on the page and feel it pushing
against me, vying for what it wants to become.
I dig my heels in and resume writing, entering into
a kind of fight. A creature has emerged from the ground
of the walled garden. It crouches before a woman
dressed in blue, feathered wings heaving. It produces a lily
in its horrible hand, holds it out to her. She recoils.
I feel my pulse at my neck, desperate now
for this poem to become something, anything else.
The creature approaches.
How awful this act of creation is.
Featured image, detail of Ecce Ancilla Domini! (The Annunciation) (1849-50) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, held in the public domain via Wikimedia.
