Staff Meeting

Staff Meeting At my desk each morning, over my first cup off coffee, I call the staff meeting to order, a gathering together of my various bits and parts that scattered in the night, each to its own devices, be they terror, notes on that yellow legal pad, erotic fantasy, unrepeatable indecencies uttered in an unfamiliar patois, a mélange of whirs and clicks, whooshing breaths, mah jong tiles scattered in patterns I don’t understand. On mornings that don’t hurt they settle gently into orderly arrangements, designs and lines of poems, the fabric of my day. Other mornings, the more ordinary ones, they reject my need, become ash that I scoop into the urn of yet another lost day.