Self-portrait 4

A poem is an opening line plus work. My
forte is the opening line but I toil
too. I bang my brain upon the page, read
through as far as I have got again and
again. That might seem too tortuous for Keats'
'If poetry comes not as naturally
as the leaves to a tree it had better
not come at all' but leaves grow slowly and
experience who knows what erasures. And
I'm confident I pass the botany
test, a blossoming bough, in the throes of
writing liable to undergo something
like the arboreal fate which the Greek myths
relate could befall maidens feeing from gods.