NOT NOW

NOT NOW

Be still, I tell

my mind, watch

the rise and fall

of the belly...

My mind, however,

has a mind

all of its own.  It's off

on its own jag,

at play with words--

its favorite 

toy.  

I have learned

from one wiser

than myself:

the trick is to tell

the mind, quite 

simply, and with quiet

insistence: Not now.

And yet not now

is sometimes not enough.

So it was

this morning:

the poem will out.