The Writer

amid a mountain of nouns
clipped from the Sunday Times
like discount coupons,
with a large box of verbs,
some of which
date back to the War of 1812,
out of a draw full of clauses,
some of which
have never ever been used before,
from a jar full of punctuation marks,
many yellowed with age,
among a closet overflowing
with prepositions, adverbs, adjectives,
articles, and pronouns,
all stacked like cordwood,
the writer sits
with an idea
and begins to write