Bethlehem, Again

This is not the poem

The good poet

With precise lines would 

Have written about

Winter, good poets,

 

Other good poets,

Nature, poetic 

Structure, the deep need

For other poets,

To build the right lines--

 

It's the sorcerer's

Apprentice among

Slop buckets spilling

Over the verge of loss,

Defeat in the eye

 

Of the deer who died

At the roadside, all

It's bones broken clean

Before its eyes sank

Into the stupor

 

It couldn't control,

But oh well, you wrote

Something, and you asked

Permission to be

Sung on the cold, bright air.