Heather OC: Week 42 of 208

Back Pages

Collect words like knick-

Knacks, shivering on the last

Pages of a notebook. Waiting

To come down off the shelf,

Out of the storage bin, rise

From the cellar - where

Each had been deposited.

Could I sell you at a

White elephant  sale? To

                    Young Poets desperate

For meaning — clutching

At the old clichés  — or

Not grasping

                     The one of them.

Isolated in sleek boxes —

Where glaring nothing

Rots each hour,

Like the crabapples

               Relinquished and the befuddled

Dear who devours them, says

Thank-you for never

                  Raking these up.