The poet was having a bad day. And a worse night. There was no poetry left. He couldn’t find a word, rhyme or no rhyme, anywhere. He searched deep in his mind. Perhaps some haiku might help, something simple, disciplined, get the ball rolling.
Couldn’t get seventeen syllables to come together at all.
He needed a walk, despite it being past midnight. Too bad, He had to get out of the house, into the air. Communing with the summer moon and stars should shake this futility.
The poet threw on a light coat, pulled on his shoes and stepped out the front door. He closed it quietly behind him and glanced around. No lights on anywhere. The neighbours slept. Ha, sleep! Perchance to dream (of a poem).
Which gave the poet an idea. Perchance, indeed, there were poems in his neighbours’ dreams. Did they remember them when they woke? Wrote them down? Did they have poetry in their souls, despite all outward appearances?
He had poetry in his soul. Which was why he was a poet. Except he wasn’t.
Made brave by his vision of poetry seeping from sleeping neighbours, the poet took a tentative step towards next door’s garden, intending to scramble over the low intervening fence rather than go up and down gravelled (noisy) driveways. He was pressing between the bushes on his side of the fence when he froze.
A porch light blinked on. A door opened across the road and a dressing-gowned neighbour peered into the moonlit gloom. His swivelling head stopped at the darker shadow of the poet in the garden bed.
The poet waved.
‘Oh, it’s you.’ The neighbour yawned widely, shook his head. ‘Heard something. Should have known.’
‘Sorry to wake you,’ the poet said, his hoarse whisper carrying across the narrow street.
‘No problem.’ The neighbour ran his hands through his hair and turned to retreat into his house. ‘Woke me from a nightmare – someone forcing me to write some bit of nonsense they claimed was a High Koo.’ He shrugged and smiled. ‘Never heard of it.’
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