A Line Came To Me Poem by Doug Lane

a line came to me
as I scrambled eggs
and I had to risk
burning them

to write it down.
Or the real risk,
because eggs
are always replaceable
and I had a teflon pan,

was that the line
was no good,
or even if it were good,
led nowhere,
was no better
than a one line poem

and what good
is a one line poem?

It's a false promise,
an i.o.u.
never to be paid.

Nonetheless
I wrote the line down
and came another,
and another.

So I was going back and forth
between the eggs
and the poem,
till the eggs,
still unburnt,
were ready,
and I ate them.

By this time
I was a couple stanzas
into the poem
and as I ate the eggs
I wondered
if I would
lose the rest of the poem,
the unwritten poem,
or if taking time to eat
would give me a chance
to gestate,
to let the rest of the poem
grow
in my mind.

I remembered
what had happened
to Coleridge.
How he had awakened
from an opium dream
to write
the dazzling first lines
of "Xanadu"
and how a visitor
had knocked
at his door
and interrupted him
and they had gone for a walk
and talked
for hours
and by the time
Coleridge got back
to his poem,
what remained
in his head
of his dream poem
was lost forever,
was but a shadowy fragment
of its former self.
So he had to write
the later lines
of the poem
in the sweat of his brow,
without the easy inspiration,
the Eden,
of the dream.
They feel contrived,
lack the other worldly power
of the early lines

But I took the chance.
Took the time
to finish eating
my eggs.

And when I returned
to the poem
it still grew
until it was finished
and that's how I
made
and ate breakfast
and finished
something new.
Not as good
as the first lines of Xanadu,
but new.
Whew!