plan

I plan to write a poem today.
I hope it will be about you. 
It will employ metaphors—
ordinary instances, natural 
forces, extraordinary 
happenings, in an attempt 
to suggest, gesture, 
somehow evoke,
even, in form, enact, 
the very apple of you—

but if in the making, 
my poem shifts, slightly, 
and doesn’t reach you,
I mean, if my arrows,
quivering, sail blithely 
past the clovers, denizens
of the air, august weather events; 
miss each neighbourhood
porch light, unlit candle, a full 
glass of Bordeaux; breeze by 
woodland paths, shivering 
bodies of icy-fresh water, 
the heavens above,
stone craft below, 
then disappear, never 
to bless your hazy horizon,
I’ll know—

you are not quite here, 
have yet to fully arrive,
that there’s nothing 
to be done but wait 
for you to emerge
from where you 
stand facing me— 

where else 
but deep at the core 
of some ordinary instance, 
some natural force— 
another unexpected, 
always extraordinary, 
attempt.