Out of the Bag

The poem comes home in a sack,
Like a caught fox, like a cat

No one wants, bagged up with stones,
To drop in the creek and drown.

Why should I feel sad for it
If I will not drown with it?

I guess since I think of it,
Once it knows now it can’t breathe

But can’t stop what it knows yet.
I try hard to think those thoughts

As if they were mine, as if
It were me, sunk in the lake,

Not this poem left up the creek.
Do they come back? Not the drowned,

But the ones who toss the sacks?
Do they hope no one finds that?

Or do they wake up, cold nights
From weird dreams in which they’ve seen

The eyes of a poem, green lights
In the waves? Hear that? It purrs.