I hunt the wild poetry
at the poetry preserves,
places where I may sit quiet as a sleeping kitten,
but then, Wham!
a feral poem pounces and twists me in its paws
until verse shoots freely through my pen.
I lust after these poetry preserves. They dot my map
like measles my childhood cheeks.
That special bench in Donaldson Park,
the golf course in Galloway, New Jersey,
and the shore of Cape May,
or the orange-treed pocket-park near Kifisias
where kittens, pigeons and poems demand food as tribute to the Muse,
and the nearby public playground atop a parking lot
where Athenian children chase their family dogs
and the feral Muses chase me.
The banks of the Yarra River,
strolling beneath sprawling trees near Avenida Corrientes,
Police Park, near Red Army Boulevard,
and the bench near my home where neighbors built a shrine
to murdered Black Lives
all entice me, all snare me when I dare
to let the buried feral verse roam free.
