speaking one-to-one

Poetry stirs in my depths
like a fish moving in the
silent dark spaces, the
deeps of a still pool

up above, the eddies from its
tail-flick swirl in the sun
glint its exploration
and bubbles rise like

an exhaled breath - I said
I was done, and the poem
seemed a full stop on the
trail walked and won.

Now, here, this afternoon
with the rain tapping on the roof
like fingers, I wonder
if I was wrong

and it is impossible to cease
the flow of the mind's enquiring
and the tongue's drug
to continue talking on.

But to what avail?  No
public acclaim in a male-
controlled-world for an
irrelevant woman
who insists on speaking
irrelevancies one-to-one.

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