The Impassioned Writer's Dilemma

When one has but one page to fill,
          what does he write?
      How does he fill the page
              with all the poetry of life,
          and not miss a thing?

With love & anger, sadness & loss
          can he only touch the surface
      of a well so deep.
To fill that page with all that well's water
          is his heart's true pain.

As the sorely fragrant breath
          of the smoker's vice
      plays its sorrowful blues in his lungs,
as the sweetly fragrant rain
          on a silent, lonely evening,
      plays its reliable melody on the flat tin roof,
as a gentle libation in a broken man's glass
      warms his tired, broken body
          and calms his tired, broken mind,
such things are but a small part
      of an innumerable myriad
          of life's graceful tales,
      wherein pain, death, love, hate, loss, and laughter
          have a beauty each their own,
      how can one chance to display, relay, portray,
                                or capture them all?

For things he has not yet seen may years past
          try to find their way to his gentle pen.
      Not with a thousand pages, nor ten thousand,
          could he chance to catch them all.

                                - end -

        - February 26, 2006