How does one lose a poem?
Write it down, forget the words,
the sly turn of phrase.
Burn the paper.
Take the ashes,
scatter them at clifftops,
over a hungry ocean,
and watch it disappear.
It's still there,
irrevocable.
Those words, on those paper -
a real poem doesn't need presence.
A real poem sings, stays,
is permanent, undestructible.
A real poem burns beneath the collarbone,
aches to be let out,
to sing loud. Poems cannot be lost,
they can merely fly away.
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