In the room where I never wrote
there is a window, a mile view
of a beach I never walked
and sea stacks corkscrewing
up through surf I never heard
breaking
In the room where I never wrote
there is an oval wood table
piled with poems I never wrote
about desert sky,
eros,
and leaving my son
In the room where I never wrote
on that same table sits
the canyon book
that never sings
of my year in the hills,
the apple orchard,
cows trampling the spring,
lynx on the road,
yellow columbine
In the room where I never wrote
there are poems
that never speak
of a tent by Pacific volcanoes,
by the Stillaguamish River
with Magister Ludi in my hand
and no money
In the room where I never wrote
fall is eternal and its long light
fills the room gold,
and the keyboard sings,
from hands that never tire
molding poems stolen
from the dead, gifted
from the living
—Mike Burwell