I woke up dreaming still lost in thought,
the gun cocked dry in my dry mouth,
my head full of traffic and Chekhov,
like a man about to walk out of his
shadow into the speed of light. Write
the poem: here is the table, here the
chair, here is the page to be filled.
I could remember only the highway,
the open end, the loose fragment
of the headlights rising in a mass.
I couldn’t think of another thing,
except the singing, and more thinking.
Write the poem, write the dark piled
up behind, say a man is walking,
walking out of himself on a road before
dawn, write the words, write the line
straight through until you reach the edge.

 

 

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Stanley Plumly (1939–2019) authored twelve poetry collections and directed the MFA program at the University of Maryland. His Collected Poems has just been published by W.W. Norton.

 

 

 

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