The Poetic Process

I wrote a poem last week.

It was too long

so I cut it

by half.

But it still seemed blurry around the edges —

metaphors missed the mark

adjectives and adverbs cluttered the images —

like stage light illuminating its subject

not quite sharply enough.

I whittled it down some more

deleted the excess

and the useless

until there were only

a handful of words left.

They weren't quite right

so I crossed them out

one by one

until there remained only

pencil scratches

and traces of erasure

on a blank page.