Song Of The Misbegotten Poem

beautiful, emaciated, unfinished,
cruelly abandoned with a flick of panache...
Billy Collins

She wept
in shadow while
the other women
fully blossomed

were summoned
from the mind's quarters
to come wearing
their experience
which had been woven
on a loom of logic,

the raw fabric
fitted to their bodies
spare and clean
as Cleopatra's linen.

She wanted
to be drawn
out of limbo
where the unbaptized
hung tangled
in a cradle of string

that tied the hands
and tongue. Chords
of a voice
that could not grasp
or express its theme.

She waited
bastard girl, breath-
taken child
to receive the reed's
final stroke, the candle's
nod of fire

acknowledging
she was complete.
Her gown had a hem,
an ending
that would not fray

and her bodice
latched the syllables
of a name.