There Are Poems

by Linda Pastan

There are poems

that are never written,

that simply move across

the mind

like skywriting

on a still day:

slowly the first word

drifts west,

the last letters dissolve

on the tongue,

and what is left

is the pure blue

of insight, without cloud

or comfort.

From Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968–1998 (New York: Norton, 1998), page 140. See also my essays, “Skywriting: Learning Haiku from Annie Dillard” and “Finding the Sky.”