The Half Bad Poem

I never remember the thirst in my body until it rains
and my chest starts heaving thank god thank god.
Maybe this perpetual thirst is a symptom
of being born in the desert but having a body that
was sculpted from woods
maybe this thirst is a kiss from a god I haven't met yet
maybe the one who's in charge of all the bad poems.
Not the unsaid poems,
all stuffed with their potential spring,
but the bad ones
the poems with overscrubbed metaphors and scraped-
up repetition and severely no rhythm
possessive nouns with too loose a grip
lines that can't get their breaks right
or decide on their commas to save a life
or the ones that talk about the thirst in the body
that can only ever be half quenched.
A poem, even a bad one, can only ever exist out of
reach, and still,
I'll have to grieve it.
I have to grieve every one
because before it was a poem, it was something else.
Before it was a poem, it was a boy and his dog
roaming the woods of my body
leaving stones in all the soft places he might rest.
But he didn't know to be careful
he didn't know to read my quiet
that my soil is madly breathing
and watch it swallow each stone like a letter
and watch the moss grow hungry on every side
watch the vine climb to the throat and then kiss it
watch his chest swell into a bay of flowers
that he plucks far too easy.
Watch him settle.
Now watch him run.
This is why I said let the woods grow slow
but even I didn't listen
and he didn't know to be careful
that tending to a living thing
requires that thing in you that is most alive
requires the capacity to hold the thirst and the quenched
to hold the tension
between wanting to run and wanting to stay.
We are always
half waiting and half leaving
half quiet and half speak
half distant and half closer than close
half desert, half woods
half alone and
half within the withmost
half a broken heart and half a bad poem
but also half a good one and half a sigh of relief.
I am big enough to hold them both
but that's not why I'm thirsty.
I'm thirsty because I know, intimately and too well,
that I'll even have to grieve the thirst once there's rain.
Every spring is half a dead winter
and the moment I make a poem, the thing it was before
is already half gone and it'll never be what it might of
been if I'd written it in other tongues.
But that's not why I write the poem.
I write the poem to admit
that, for half a moment, every poet god in me was raging
half hoping and half fearing
that these halves might be able to place a stone.