Constant

Under a hackneyed prophecy
of a moon mostly shielded in clouds,
she writes her missive
on the rotting picnic table
out back of the trailer.

She’s not sure what it’s about,
whom it’s to,
or even why,
but she knows it’s necessary,
it always has been.

The pencil is beyond dull,
and the soft surface of the table
threatens collapse at every stroke,
but she bears down with an intensity
rarely seen on this side of the river.

She once had someone
she whimsically called a lover,
and they told her all those words
would never lead to anything good.

The lover is gone,
the table is collapsing,
and the pencil is little more than a nub,
but the words will never end.

James Benger has written a bunch of stuff. Some of it has even been published in print and on the interwebs. So far there are two ebooks, three chapbooks, six splits, and two full-lengths. He is the resident slacker on the Board of Directors of the Writers Place, and is the most truant member of the Riverfront Readings Committee. He is also the admin of an online poetry workshop called 365 Poems in 365 Days, which has produced four anthologies and counting. He lives and Kansas City with his wife and children.