As wind passes through a screen door (Sutra #8)

2.
It is normal
to miss the poet we once were.
We should not mourn it,
but it is, I think,
okay to miss the stale smell of one's body, of
too much coffee and unwashed hair,
to be aware of how the needs of the body,
to eat and urinate and
breathe disrupted the transcription of your visions,
miss how ten line poems
kept you up until daybreak,
screaming-bloodshot eyes forgetting to blink.
I miss most the feeling
of plucking a line from the ether,
some green-dipped gem, wild and fractal,
imbued with fire.
There is no high,
no moment of clarity,
no greater release
than giving birth to something
only I could midwife onto the page,
something that breathes on its own,
pulses.