Letting go of preciousness

Lucas Daniel Peters


Though I’m precious not all my thoughts are 

of my own hand. So with my father’s hand 
writing I acquired imagination in small caps. 

My letters bubbled up the page in many large 

accidents. I had his teeth to grind them away. 
It wasn’t my imagination that licked my stout 

heart clean. But the poem I wrote that firmed 

up looping good. Because I had throttled all 
the cold out & had the cold put away. Put away 

the ice cream cones! Summer has died! Once again 

my diabolical angels turn down the dark road 
I do not know then scatter across my dreams 

waking me with their sharp clear words . . . Still 

how wonderful it is to experience those old 
etchings which hadn’t softened for me before 

& harden for me still. All those cloudform 

imaginings made by pencilled smears. Always 
leading to the place where all I imagine as new 

slip & leap in previously treasured almost ways.