A truth is never a choice
Because a choice is never true.
You could easily have made the other choice,
Couldn’t you?
The difficult decisions are simple
Because you are simple. You don’t understand
The life which has happened to you.
You have no choice but to put the glow
Of the pastry case in your poem,
Selecting words in the café.
As a poet, you must find descriptions for your words;
You must put words and pictures together,
If weather contributes to mood—or mood contributes to weather;
Or, you could make it all up: the huge wave of rain,
The corresponding reasons for discomfort, cloudiness, or pain,
Which, if questioned too deeply by the critic,
The poet may count as disdain.
What if “married” were the same as “gay,”
To choose whom you sleep with, or never sleep with? Who is to know?
When you found yourself loving Bobbi, you examined the pastry case glow
On that rainy day,
Writing meditatively in your little café.
When you decided to go, only then did you know where to go:
You went directly to a word meaning stop instead of a word meaning slow.
The poem’s choices are not the poet’s, displayed in café or rain,
And your choices are not choices, because they were made in pain,
Which has nothing to do with the poem composed on, or in, the café.
You write the perfect poem when you throw every choice away.