How long are we poets given to capture a wild po before the klaxon horn of intrusive reality obliterates nascent magic in the mind’s ear?

When a po first tickles my mind as an ephemeral flickering whisper, I grasp that whisp and scribble, fearing my first glimpse of such words/image might melt back into the wordless void before I capture that feral po and affix my em, making it my poem.

Remembering A. A. Milne, I hum “When you go after words in a balloon the great thing is not to let them know you’re coming.”

Sometimes I catch a sidelong glimmer, then struggle for half an hour to land the elusive wimage, only to feel both image and words slip silently out of my fickle mind.

Occasionally a po arrives bearing its own em, emphatically announcing itself as ready for print, no need of my midwifery, I being only a conduit providing my right temple for poem’s emergence whole (or nearly so).

Yet often I earn my self-anointed rank of poet by spending hours ensconced in the library chamber of my phone, reading, referencing, refining, defining (Paul Theroux rates his dictionary over thesaurus) to hone each word and stanza and chapter into clarity, truth, and musicality before I can clamp on my appended em and proudly claim another poem mine.

How about you?