I received a letter requesting that I invent a form, a task
you will think should be easy, but
it was not. The request simmered, month by month, half forgotten.
We have an agreement, the muse and I,
you see, about requests:
they have to come from her, or else be like
those winter flies suddenly slow and loud in a house
whose doors and window have been long closed and locked.
When the owners return, in spring, the small, dark bodies
remain--
evidence that something always happens.
Even when there is nothing, something happens.
As with love. "Not here, not now," the heart protests.
Then the evidence: irrefutable, the low buzzing.
~ from Given Sugar, Given Salt (HarperCollins Publishers, 2001)
