Six thirteen PM,
ten PM, midnight
or just before dawn,
the rhythm of what I am
pulls me to the desk,
drums me
into the seat,
and there I stay
until a poem has come.

If you pluck two guitar strings
that are close to unison tuning
and watch, you will see the waves
of one splitting the waves of the other.
Sock them into tune and you’ll see
the waves become the same.
The math of music is reliable,
and so is this arithmetical
process of mine that brings me
back to the work and tenses me
until I sing in tune.

If everything is math,
it follows that if every word has its purpose
and every purpose must have its word.
I’m solving for purpose in words.
Apogee, perihelion, parabola,
terms of art; heart, love, passion,
common denominators; walnut,
cheese, mold, cheekbones, leaf,
veins, all the possible numerals
for use. 

No logic here worth following,
no rules but the bare need
to follow what seems to be
a path, a proof of hypothesis.
An elegance in the solution
is worth the loss
of breath
and sleep
and time. 

And in the end, after
the ciphering is done? 
It should sing.  It should sound a note
or two or more in harmony,
or dissonance that opens irrational
music for thought; what I hear
may be different than I thought I would
but it will be music and if you see me
in the poem
I should swing and thrum
in time to what you hear.

So rhythm will pull me
again and again to the desk,
to the equations and the harmony,
back to the axis through my spine
and the one through my groin
around which I plot the curves
of how I will sing when the tension
at last is equalized
at six AM, ten AM,
dawn or noon or just before,
whenever I am pulled toward song.