Meditation on Meditation

If this is not a poem
about poems
then it is about being

ground down
and fed up
into

the mouth of the old
guard-
eons old -
who waited on
the concrete bridge
for you,
the bridge

spanning difference.

Your mistake
was trying
to return
at the wrong time
to the old world,
where a bird

was a bird,
a cage door

was a cage door
and a bridge

was a bridge -
if there ever were
two worlds -
after all

you made
a questionable calculation
when you chose to lose
yourself
in someone else's
language,
in a game
of all
or nothing,

when you traded in a moment
of fear
for the feeling
of being
and let-it-be,

when you chose
to lose your self-
portrait
in someone else's
frame.

In the end
living
in a roundabout way
will always be
like rummaging
through someone else's drawer;

thank goodness
this is all
just a mixed-up metaphor.