Snow Leopard

You cannot write a villanelle by committee

Because silence is the soil from which poems grow.

It's like searching for a leopard in a city.

Hari's group's at work on a weather ditty,

While Sammy's group is starting kind of slow…

You cannot write a villanelle by committee.

Out in Shepherd Commons there's the witty

Wong and crew looking as if they know

where to find a leopard in the city.

Kumar, Hagan, and Meekins are looking pretty

much like the three blind mice— just goes to show

you cannot write a villanelle by committee.

And here I am, sucking at the muse's titty,

with only a stanza and a half to go,

hot on the trail of a leopard in a city,

a deer in a mall, a flying dophin, forging in the smithy

of my soul a leopard hiding in the snow.

Go home. Commit a villanelle alone.

You'll find your leopard there, not in the city.

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