Where is the poem welling up within,
coming to a boil and ready to be released
as a stream of invisible steam
whining into oblivion?

It whimpers now
and dies within her breast,
heavy with the burden of so many things
left unsaid, left lingering in the lost places.

There are no words; only fizzled dreams
and reflections of remembered sorrows
stirred. Shaken, she is taken
by the storm of memory.

Swept up and spat out
by whale of a wind, she awakens to familiar faces,
is relieved by ordinary company yet missing
strange land of dreams.

She's lost the song, hop-skip
through treachery. She misses the smiles
of wounded companions who marched fearlessly
never knowing all they had in not having.

She lies prostrate in green haze, poisoned by
cackle of reality. She peers into crystal ball soul,
these fragments of whole, but yellow brick
morphs to poppy field and again

she wanders through sleep
in search of poetry.