Poem (Response): Words For Compost

My friend, Terry, wrote a poem entitled “Ideas Trapped By Words” and I borrowed a line and took it for a walk, into a new poem (as a sort of response).

His poem — about shredding paper and ideas as the mind wrestles with words — brought up similar for me something that comes from the act of writing a poem every  single morning (which is what I do): there are ruts that one gets into with common topics, with form or formlessness, with dead ends that bring it all to a halt. Some days, I post something in the form of what someone might generously call “poetry” that belongs more naturally in the compost bin (but those are the poems, too, that sit in my mind for hours until I tighten them up with revision — so maybe my head is the compost bin?)

Anyway, here is my poem:

I wish more of my words
could become compost –

for when I’m fed up
with nothing to say
but still, in ink
and idea, saying it –

Just imagine the weeds
on the lawn, droopy at dawn
but strengthening by day,
as if discarded verse

took something worse,
and transformed it into
something unrecognizably
beautiful

Peace (and dirt),
Kevin