Tonight I wanted to write a poem about a young girl who
      chases a kite, or a balloon, or some phantom airplane
      off the side of a mountain, plummeting to her death.
The poem I was going to write had to do with the way we all
      at one time or another have wanted something
      as desperately as this.
Li Po, sixty one years old, drunk, jumps from his boat
      looking for fish, or for the moon, or for his own
      reflection in the Yangtze River—
      sinking towards an unknown burial.
The fish I was going to write about were going to be as ancient as
      the moon or as old as Li Po, or the girl who was twelve
      years old, going on infinite.
I was going to write about the way we all, at one time, have wanted
      something as badly as this: the young girl running after her scarf
      or an umbrella or a distant airplane, or toward her own destiny of
      grief.
Then I glanced at the mountain of books beside my
      bed, at the laundry huddled in the corner of the room like a
      judgment—all of the ordinary signs of a full and crowded
      life, branded by unspeakable dirt and quiet disregard.
I walked outside along the landing. I fell into a darkness
      as old as the stars that weren’t there.
I thought of the mountains and of the moon reflected in the sea
     somewhere. I thought of the laundry in the bedroom, the  
     books that will be waiting tomorrow—and the day after that—
     for someone to bring them back to life again.

-- Moneta Goldsmith