10,000 Hours (or the time it takes)

Someone once said that’s how long

It takes to be good at

Anything like poetry

I started late destined in my forties

to be still trying at seventy experienced already

in dying life and children

I have the art of walking down with a precision of

Steps and movement that mimic

A waltz without music and talking

Was a birth of love

like a train pulled from

a tunnel all that sound

pulsing with life

a unique practice of love

unrequited stings like

Ripping flies from their wings

making me an artist of sorts

Now being great at poetry

Will have to wait till I almost

forget what it is like

To be so clever forget alliteration

Or rhyme or song

10,000 hours 27 years maybe ill be

as great as a flower in an empty field

Or a proof set of 1965 quarters

Giving you one more day

glistening when the light hits me

just right