THE HUNT

   I start a poem to scratch some mental itch;
   Some nagging subject yearns to be explored,
   Though at the first I have no notion which
   New destination I am heading toward.

   It’s an adventure with no certain goal,
   Only the hope of some discovery
   That somehow versifying may cajole
   From hiding, toward captivity.

   By this point in the hunt, I’ve scanned the field
   And settled on some major metaphor,
   A trope I hope that finally will yield
   A verse to be compared with those of yore,

        For even Petrarch hunted for a deer,
        Then Spenser followed—now I pull up the rear.

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