Start with an abstract idea,
June, 1944 perhaps.
Discuss it a moment, tease it –
in Normandy, the allies prevailed,
yet the war dragged on –
then switch
without warning to a wholly different subject,
the night wind blew so hard
it knocked down the mountain shack
that cloudless night the old man died alone.
Write two short lines
of quick, clipped words
then slowly and yawningly stretch the syllables all the way to the rightmost margin of the page.
Write one simple line of Anglo-Saxon prose
And one of meticulous and ornate Latinate verbiage.
Then
bring the poem back to that windy night,
the color of the sky beyond the silhouette of the shack.
Ask a question: Was there a moon?
And answer,
What, come morning, was totally, irrevocably changed?