Tracking

I keep a note pad by my bed and some nights I wake up and scribble an image or line down. Most of the time, as I'm writing, I'm thinking I struck gold. But, when I wake up, I've been robbed: I either don't remember the context to the line or image or it was in fact fool's gold. I do this quite regularly, so I may make a weekly thing/ post out of it.

I actually scribbled a note about this post, before I wrote it:

'Ideas for poems are like animal tracks. You have to know how to identify them, follow the trail, backtrack, pick up a scent, put your ear to the ground, (other hunter terms I don't know).'

Well, here's the gold:

Elephant ears floating as lily pads, tusks rising as.....              
(I actual saw this at a faux safari down in Florida) 

Today is a circle.
Yesterday was a square
The weekend doesn't exist.

This is an oar.
This is a chorus.
Here is the stream.

A mannequin poses with her fingers
cut off reaching into the window.
(on second look I like hangs instead of poses)

[added after: (He tries to catch rejections into)]
the unbroken in pocket of his catcher's mitt.

the voice of a train
[what if the train speaks broken English? or it stutters(too obvious?)]

rain hits mounds of snow and it
all becomes corral that you can
scoop up into your hand
[look what's inside the snow,
a marble, a helicopter, a frozen ant.]

6 identical Chinese brothers
live the same life.
perform. sleep. eat.
trade. shave. hide.

I don't know if I'll be able to get anything out of these ideas, but I think I got something from thinking poems are like animals, and their tracks. I have to let them breathe, and as much as I can train them, I will never know what they're thinking. And as much as they can be my greatest companions, they can also eat my face off.