John Biscello

Inspiration

is not a matter of chance,

or waiting, or a magic spell

that demands bated breath and fretted suspension—

it is the fact that you pick up a pen,

your fingers growing warm and intimate with its weight and feel,

the slow almost dumb beautiful realization that you,

or someone like you is holding a pen, an instrument aloft

and hovering above a blank page, and some kind of strange ceremony,

half-marriage, half-divorce, is about to take place,

in which you, or someone like you, as a form of expression,

is both the effect and the cause.

The pen, through good times and hard,

accounts for dreaming,

and inspiration runs through your fingers

like an unschooled course on being.