Late for Sunday Scribblings

Too Late

I’m poemed out.
It’s late in the school
day and I used
all my words already
in earlier classes.

They were bunched
up like cattle waiting
to be let out into a field
after a long, cold winter.
And when I picked up
my pencil, the gate
swung open
and they gamboled
down my arm,
and stretched
out on the clean
pasture of my paper

leaving me empty.
I close and lock
the fence, put my
notebook away,
and smile wryly
at these stragglers.