A POET'S COMMANDMENT

You may look back

and your curse your verse

nurse it in a conduit
as a bottle

of milk

for nature's sake
take a picture

of a robin's red breast,

make words out of silk

relax with tables

of cucumber or watercress,

take cover

in your collections

and change its design
or your directions

rest on your waking laurels

quarrel with your peers
or critics
drink wine
eat bread to bless

or make believe
that your fears
that your eidetic peers
have a wise past reality
that the paradise
of poetry disappears

from its last fatality.