That scrawny cry – It was A chorister whose c preceded the choir
"Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself" Wallace
Stevens
Sometimes
below my lamp before my pen
is put to pad they come
a procession of C’s a solo O long lost
an N escaped from send
an acolyte I
utterances from the deep
that know no ground
seeking to conceive their own conception
hovering
over my empty page
like the Spirit
over the stunned Virgin.
Michael J. Whelan has
studied poetry with Angela Budy Hollander at the Gettysburg Writers Conference
and Robert Pinsky at the Aspen Literary Festival. His work will be appearing in
The Healing Muse, The Cynic, The Little Patuxent Review, and Coachella Review;in
addition, he is at work on a collection of poems tentatively titled After
God. He lives and works in Washington, D.C.
