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It started out as such a nice day

But then a cloud crept up and the day grew overcast.

Your spirit clouded over too. But ‘nowhen’, we don’t say.

Perhaps we should. It’s best to hit upon a process

Rather than a plot. It’s not a matter of cause and effect.

Nowhere – the space that time forgot.

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It’s the elephant in the room leaving no room

For us others. Objects lost in dreams get stored there for eternity.

But why make such a fuss out of not being able to locate it?

Some wade in until they are out of their depth.

Others are just dropped into the deep to flail about.

Maybe they flail in a landward direction. Then again, maybe not.

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As for nowhere, many poems get there

Lickety-split, without a clue to its meaning.

Plato hated poets and devised philosophy

To counter Homer’s lies. He would be appalled, I’m sure,

By today’s cos-play homilies tarted up as verse

Whose freedom’s a curse contaminated by some petty simile.

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I don’t feel that this poem’s getting anywhere.

It is not a painting of night, not a cloud above a wood.

Not a woman looking back at the sunken boat of her virginity.

It can accumulate line after line,

But is it any closer to being understood?

It should have been written by John Ashbery.

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