a path opens up
and my poetry treads upon it
lightly at first then
stomping and making tracks
making sure someone knows
we’ve gone down this road

who is that someone?

why must we prove ourselves?

are words and stanzas and
whole completed poems not enough to show
that we’ve gone and we’ve seen and we
maybe even learned something?

and why must we tread so damn carefully at first?

are we worried we aren’t welcome
on this road our own psyche
showed to us?

my brain does a lot of strange things
and my metaphors may make them seem even stranger

but all our brains interpret things in silly ways sometimes

and all of our brains are all we have to live with
for the rest of our
lives