I Heard Titles Were Important

I have not written a poem
for a long time.

A real poem, mind you - with stark enjambment and dripping metaphors that spill over
and flood the living room floor.
I've started several, recently.
But I keep stalling at the first stanza.
Right when I shift into second gear my engine sputters and I quite the cresting hill.

sputtering engines
crestfallen

A resilient ambiguity attends me whence ever I go. It covers my tracks like Pongo in 101 Dalmations. (Rachel that simile is for you.) Pine branches sweeping my little footprints back into the slate of snow.

I was never there.

I forgot I was here until a girl in class today stood. Quivering, she read her poem about earthworms.
"I'm a little passionate about them." She ends, with a shy smile.
My foot presses through the crust of of ice that always covers
snowfall in Oregon.
And then I remember the words I love,
The way reading fills my belly with a warmth that
could replace food.

I write down "little passions" on a piece of paper as the girl sits back down (did you know words only last as long as it takes to say them?) and the ambiguity settles like dinner: filling up my corners.

Spring crashes through my window and melts winter into pools on my living room floor.