The other night I wrote a poem. The poem, like many, was about its origins – how and why it came to be. It was five a.m. I didn’t want to be up, hadn’t been planning a poem; if work was my doom at that achy hour, other assignments clamored. This poem, like any I make, had no market, evident purpose, likely audience, even in (oh-so-flattering) prospect. I know poets, persons who define themselves by this activity: I’m not one. If my output pleased, I might share it with Jane, who’d (at a minimum) nod politely (she is kind). Then I’d shelve it or, if I’d typed it, file it, and that would be that: an utterly impractical pointless expenditure of time and mind when I’d rather be sleeping.

I expose the poem below, not in a self-laudatory spirit – aren’t I something! – but from perplexity. I kind of like the poem and hope you will too, but at best it’s only a shrug, no great Shakes. I’ve not planted it here whimpering to be anthologized, like Henry for food when he’s hungry. While this attempt’s benign enough, it’s insane – and I am not, I protest, not just now. So why? And do other creatures experience such weird whims or only humans? (For don’t we all have secret indulgences we disclose to none?)

Here’s what I made:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThe feeling of

The feeling of fivea.m. differs fromnine’s – or noon’s – ordusk’s as theoccupant of one’sestranged from his fellowsthough they share a shape.

Each hour demandstalents uselessor a hindrance elsewhere,a different script.Five a.m, forexample, insists onstrength for silence,

swatting away ex-istential wobbles asso much guff.A breakfast self,by contrast, in-sists on a creamyhardihood toward day.

At present the dogdrapes from his chairdrained of zealwhile his masterwith his pencounting seventries to get a feel.

Four stanzas of seven lines, the first six of two beats, the seventh three. I’d begun this meditation as a missive, exploring the demand for different capabilities at different hours – an ample theme for prose – but the words wanted to dance – in an inelegant clodhopper fashion – no dazzling Pope-ian perfection here! – and they settled on this seven-line pattern with its inelegant, thudding, office-dusty diction.

The conclusion, too, was unexpected. Dog Henry, deliciously draped on his chair, “drained of zeal”, embodies an answer, a reproach even, to his time-obsessed, number-haunted “master” (though who’s master here is open to debate). Henry doesn’t require different selves for different hours because he lives in one time period only – the present – where adequacy is guaranteed. He is always himself – neither brave against “ex-istential” dread nor cocky confronting the demands of dawn (that pairing “creamy hardihood” made me smile). The concluding cliché – “tries to get a feel” – gently mocks its maker – what does it mean “to get a feel”? – while returning us to the topic promised by the poem’s title and first line.

Huh, I thought, after forty minutes of writing, rewriting, counting, here’s something. Of worth? – that was not my call – others, if any, would render verdicts. The probability of durability was close to zilch – yet here it was – an unexpected object of a certain shape – which an hour ago didn’t exist. A baby of sorts – with its life ahead – which might amount to more than mediocrity (for some lives inevitably do). And I’d made it – inadvertently, even unwillingly – here was my progeny – I had more babies than even Elon Musk – and they were clean and quiet in their nursery – and inexpensive to rear.