[All My Poems Start]

All my poems start
five seconds before you get there
& every time you find a chair
to sit down in, you blink & find a bird
or an elephant or something
in place of the chair, & really
all you wanted to do was to talk
seriously to my poem, across a table,
over coffee; outside it is 1:30 pm
& you had one or maybe 2 things
you really needed to explain
to my poem & now the afternoon
of explaining things has passed
& the sun moves across the window
which means the sun moves across the sky
which means night is coming on & poems
never listen to what anybody has to say
at night.