Faded Mastery

there’s a mastery in words
I fear I have lost

the skill of wielding
phrases to frame thoughts
and fire insights in
a salvo of paragraphs

has escaped me.

the stimulation I used
to wake up and feel

the joy of writing
the puzzle of punctuating rhythm
the mischief of hunting humour

has faded with no fanfare
or trace of splendour.

just a wrinkled page is left
strewn with
smudged crosses struck over
derelict scribbles

and the infinite space
in Word documents

where poems in bloom
were backspaced
into oblivion.

*First published by Not For Print (2019)