The Poet

Her mind accumulates oddments and curios, contrivances with strange linkages, attachments that bolt unlikely parts together; the mechanics of metaphysics. Pieces of something she is sculpting or assembling, or just waiting for, a glimpse of a word-picture too intricate to be entirely recalled as a whole canvas. She discovers these odd figments on the leeched rim of vision, where shapes are nameless. Part of her mind burns with the light of a kerosene lamp, the other blazes too brightly. Slowly she feels the inconceivable creep upon her, imagines discovering the last transcendental piece of a scattered poem, the keystone. Senses reach for a nexus there are endless connections, too many to grasp. She realizes that her whole life she has been building images that can only be seen once, once before their time, after that they are just writing.