ANDREAS GRIPP

2 pm without a laptop

The ink in my pen has dried.

There’s residual dark
that makes opaque
the barrel’s translucent
shaft,

teasing me,

conveying the illusion
that it’s full,
gassed
and ready to scribe:

at fifty frantic strokes
for every
half-a-minute
of time,
scribbling down
the impromptu poem
that somehow popped
in my head,
about some basket-lunch
in Springbank Park
with the would-be
love of my life,

swatting the bugs
and evading the ants,
delousing invaders
of the minuscule kind,

making it
a metaphor
for enemies
ready to wreck.

After several invisible
scratches,
loops
that furrow the white,
my poetry fades
unbirthed
as I have nothing
by which to write,

the words departing
like picnic crumbs
on the backs
of an army of black.

Andreas Gripp