She writes her poems from back to front
so to discover if to laugh or to cry
by her first draft of the final couplet
Without missing a step at the volta
she leaps backwards across quatrains
shifting moods in return toward home
She alights on the nascent, the nexus
between having thought at all or not,
ultimately and eventually
When the scream or the sonnet is done,
she tucks the pen behind her ear,
adjusts a curl then disappears
Chagall 2018
