The Unwritten
After ‘The Unborn’ by Sharon Olds

Ian Chung

Sometimes I can almost hear, inside my head,
Like voices around a campfire in summer,
The poems I could write,
The whisper of them.

Sometimes I feel them sleeping, hiding
In some cavern – fugitives, half-
Aching for discovery.

Sometimes I find them waiting like wary words
Inside a Norton Anthology

And sometimes, like tonight, by some black
Second sight I can watch just one of them
Teetering on the edge of the doors of my perception
In the dark, surrendering its sound and sense
Irrevocably to me.