Panning For Poems

Have you ever panned for gold
on a high mountain stream,
clear and bubbling
with well worn rocks and pebbles tumbling
and roiling on the bottoms?

You will know then
the feel
igniting the instinct of old,
so ripe and pungent
you can almost smell the gold.

You take your pan
and ripple the water
picking up the sand,
swishing, swishing,
easing out the silt and whatever you can,
leaving the glitter
at the bottom of the pan.

A poem is like that:

You find a stream
or in this case-a thought,
you search it for what it brought,
a glitter,
maybe just a gleam…
You check the ripples,
the quiet water, the mossy fold,
until you can almost smell the gold.

You take your pan
and swish it ’round,
easing out the verbiage,
discarding the lees
while keeping some,
looking for the treasure you envision,
you swish it ’round again
again, and again,
still discarding,
still keeping,
and as you work the gravels…
A poem unravels.