Ideas In The Rough

a miracle if this indecision’s length comes
close to an ode, it’s eleven hours by now,
that’s some attention span – only a scribe
of infinite patience or total lack of boding
application imagines writing this way, and 
by avoiding topics or debating issues that
really mattered in claiming no hint of any
motivation towards actual achievement 

but it’s an elegy on bereavement – that is
for a poem which died intestate and before 
being born; wry sort of irony in that, could
it have life without actually being writ and
a full-ceremonial right recognising it as is
accorded its material brethren?

hope of resolution’s still miles away after 
eleven hours mulling fate, bit sonnet-like
I’d say, ideas in the rough don’t translate
from free range verse, left aloof too long
and unimpeached they lose flavour and
manners we’d teach ‘em will usually fail
© 12 December 2012, I. D. Carswell