Dawn 101
Patty Seyburn
1.
Every morning I look for an idea
After a dawn search for apparitions
(They have three conditions)
I interrupt: give me three wishes.
We are not genies, they say, genius loci
Every morning one idea that will sit
in the backseat with me
Sometimes it hides with God
“They flee from me that sometimes did me seek”
It’s a merge, I say, maybe my last words
3.
Oh so that’s where my lost happiness went
Misfiled under taxes 2002
The 40th word I made in ruzzle was soul
after house, douse, souse, rouse,
how, low, row, sew and sow – oh, that
old so-and-so, I saw him walk slowly
across the street, looking for home, and for once
was patient, thought he might be an angel
here to test my hospitality – let me not fail
on something so obvious
Patty Seyburn has published five collections of poems: Threshold Delivery (Finishing Line Press, 2019); Perfecta (What Books Press, Glass Table Collective, 2014); Hilarity, (New Issues Press, 2009), Mechanical Cluster (Ohio State University Press, 2002) and Diasporadic (Helicon Nine Editions, 1998). She is a professor at California State University, Long Beach.