We Rode Poems

I remember

staying up all

night riding poems.

Simile eyes

black as periods on

end-stopped lines.

We saddled them

with conceits

over blankets

of metaphor,

spurred them on,

reveling in each

galloping anapest

and cantering

dactyl.

Your poem

carried you far,

it’s tetrameter

opening up

a fervent gait,

but my poem

lost its footing

on a broken

enjambment and

I had to put

it down.


This was first published in Common Threads, Volume 69, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2009.