POEM WAITING

All day long there has been a poem waiting,
hanging around in my mind like next spring’s daffodils.
You know how subtly powerful those things are.
I see and smell them months ahead of their actual appearing.
Violets do that, too, especially the little wild ones.
This poem that I can smell and taste and almost see
is one that has peeked at me before
but has always teased and then retreated
like the faint figure in a French Quarter window
suspended in blackness behind flimsy curtains,
tentative, androgynous but definitely there.
I’ll sit and wait awhile to see if more of it appears.