TRAPPED
Inside my busy head a poem is trapped, can’t get out,
I must admit this feeling makes me want to shout,
It is like a word on the tip of the tongue that’s stuck,
It won’t escape until I’m nearly asleep, that’s my luck.

Then it is much better to get up and crawl out of bed
Than try to sleep with ideas running free in my head,
And if I do actually mange to settle off to sleep at all,
Ideas now loose may hide again behind a brick wall.

An author’s mind often races like an express train,
Ideas, tidy in their compartments, all neat in my brain,
Then other times it’s like fishing with a rod and bait
And for every little thought just sit and just wait.

Others times it’s dozens of ideas like a pot of stew,
That’s the hardest mess for the mind to sort through,
Ideas happily boiling, mixed meat, vegies and grain,
Until the stew simmers down, I don’t feel quite sane.

The latter is the state my mind is in now, I do declare,
Ideas and words dancing around inside, ideas most fair,
It is hard to concentrate at all until my head is all clear,
I’m glad I’m a teetotaller or I’d drown myself in beer.

(Millicent) Ann Margetson 10 March 2004