New poem: "The Poet's Puzzling Vision"

 

The Poet’s Puzzling Vision

 

The poet applied polysporin on the crusty scab

on his right hand to help the new skin grow,

and in one day, the dead scabby skin began to fall

away. The poet fell off his trail bike rushing

to answer the mobile phone on the coffee end table

on his front deck, which rested on top of his Saturday

Star and National Post newspapers and the book

he had written on his mentor Gurdjieff, and he scraped

the back of his writing hand on the asphalt driveway;

and as the poet waited for his morning coffee to brew

the day after he applied the polysporin on his hand,

he had a vision of being so distant from the world

that no one could approach him. The black scab

fell off his bruised hand and the new skin was shiny

and clean, and the poet’s puzzling vision revealed

itself to him: he saw himself in the world but no longer

of this world, which was the very heart and soul

of his puzzling poetry, and he felt strangely good

for not being understood, because he knew that when

the world was ready for what his poems said,

he most certainly would be read.