NaPoWriMo - day twenty seven

(talking)

i walked through the door

and she was already talking.

not a stream of words

but a torrent, a wave.

she just kept talking,

drowning me in sound -

a wall of noise -

a battering ram

against my thoughts

in this previously

quiet moment

non-stop talking

as if desperate

to fill the spaces

with something,

anything but

silence, talking

in circles, the same

introductions, the same

invocations unchanging

rhythm of the same phrases

lurching back and forth.

the talking continues

even now at home

as she kneels

to say her prayers

unwilling to receive

the peace, nothing

in her mouth
but her own

unceasing

tongues.

The Student by Billy Collins - NPM27

My poetry instruction book,
which I bought at an outdoor stall along the river,

contains many rules
about what to avoid and what to follow.

More than two people in a poem
is a crowd, is one.

Mention what clothes you are wearing
as you compose, is another.

Avoid the word vortex
the word velvety and the word cicada.

When at a loss for an ending,
have some brown hens standing in the rain.

Never admit that you revise.
And--always keep your poem in one season.

I try to be mindful,
but in these last days of summer

whenever I look up from my page
and see a burn-mark of yellow leaves,

I think of the icy winds
that will soon be knifing through my jacket.

Collins, Billy "The Student" The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems. New York: Random House, 2005. 51.