Footnotes

I wish along with my poems I had scribbled footnotes

So that I could rediscover why I wrote

The lines that I did, months and years ago

What was I thinking at the time, I want to know

Was I amused by something, was I angry or irked

I would like to remember how I had worked

My emotions into a seemingly coherent verse

I would like to trace my process in reverse

*

There are no notebooks, no notes scribbled in the margins

No indication of the emotional state I was in

While writing those verses, all that is left for me

Is the final product that everyone else can see

Some poems I distinctly remember having penned

But for the vast majority, my memory that far does not extend

*

I think this is a sign nudging me to write

With pen and paper, making notes in a margin to the right

Crossing words and phrases in order to find

The best language to express the thoughts in my mind

Months and years later I would like to read

The poem as well as its footnotes, indeed