Under The Weather

In the late morning chill,

The poet surges forward still -

His cold is a test of the will.

Feeling weak, as the body attempts to write;

Forehead is burning and frying the mind,

Insides are turning and tying into a bind,

All while alert and asleep duel each other and fight.

Knowing the creations cannot be allowed to stop,

No matter the state of the mental or physical condition;

He adheres, like a farmer still tending to each crop,

A marriage in sickness and health, traveling toward perdition.

He`s building verses into stanzas – no stopping the developing,

The rhymes in his frozen mind, the rhythm of ice in his veins,

The tundra of dreams (with sleet of imagination) are enveloping;

These actions cannot be confined, to his physical apparatus and brain.

Like a runny faucet - the eyes and nose are dripping;

With each cough, lungs feel as if they`re paper ripping.

Something as simple as end-rhyme becomes a

Rubrics cube - “red/head, blue… what did I say”?

The brain feels totally lost and confused -

The pain is one cost, and it is also fused

With torpor, the total price leaves the flesh abused;

While rest offers a pleasant retreat, there is a problematic confliction -

Which the heart, to the mind, entreats: Isn`t writing asleep a contradiction.

So

He ignores all distractions on this day off;

Including the nose and lungs, which cough.

His flesh is an iron mesh, his bones are tempered steel;

The winds which thresh him, he simply - refuses to feel.

Though the shepherd may have been weakened by a cold;

He still works these words - his flock of sheep

(They represent his verbal herd), and he shall tend to his fold.

His dedication is pouring, waters extremely deep –

Fortitude (to his profession) fill his flesh, his well.

He draws the liquid, from below, bringing it up -

Onto the grassy page it spills, and there it will dwell;

He adamantly refuses not to strengthen and develop.

Remembering a universal truth

Our professional command (rising still – resolute);

Into the heavens (by our will and demand),

Every action must continue to shoot,

And all trials we should weather and withstand.

Composed By: Andrew Drucker