On the Threshold

This exists. The roadrunner,

Length of a grown man’s forearm,

Wiry and spiky-feathered,

Waits just outside the window

To be granted existence

As well. Poems do that to lives,

Change their stakes—for the poets,

At least, if not the readers.

What the poem declares exists

Exists. But you want to write

Something more. Strange persistence,

Like war, to its existence.

The roadrunner’s still waiting,

Sharp spike of its tail twitching.