Loafing around waiting for inspiration to arrive,
Dropping in naturally from a party with the gods,
Waiting to be gifted for that speck of time
Which secures the sure plan and full completion
Tends to ensure only no-go.
In truth, in all verity, right-thinkers,
Inspiration is absurd -
That falling jigsaw pieces should click together,
Hang poised in mid-air and drift to rest
Belies all natural law.

Yet even the acorn will not free from
Its close withdrawn brown cell
The embryonic ice-white shoot in spring
But for touch of sun in earth and rain.
And this is a cold morning.

This was my first published poem (excluding some pieces which were published in high school yearbooks) and was published in a New Zealand magazine called NZ HOME JOURNAL. So, at least, my files tell me, though the date of publication has been lost. At a guess, this poem appeared back in 1973.

This is the kind of poem I would never write now, on principle: a poem about the writing of poetry. I want (now) to go out and engage the world. But this is now. That was then.

In retrospect, one of the problems of being a young poet is that it's easy to run out of subject matter. As I post this online in January of 2004, I'm a much older poet with a comparatively vast repository of experiences and thinking time.

I've read, in places, opinions saying that writing gets more difficult as you get older. But that's not my experience.