the hay is in the barn

the tragedy

of this machine

is that one

never gets to see what happens

in the rewrite,

the original draft

is long gone.

as are

the changes made from day

to day.

there are no scraps of paper,

as there are

with Whitman,

with Lowell,

with Scott Fitzgerald, 

with Plath,

or Hemingway.

no lines crossed out,

no new thoughts

in the margins.

no balls of paper in the bin.

so much is weather and mood

related.

how happy we

are in the moment and then

sad and grey

the next morning after taking

a call,

or watching the news.

all of the toil and misprints,

the struggles are swept

away,

the work gone.

what appears instead

is the hay already in the barn.