expectations

ideas brew, percolate, steep but when I sit down 
to write the long imagined play
the characters move slowly from their platform of ruined columns 
refuse to speak as they shift compliantly into Scene 1

I do not hear them and yet I expect an ease I never find
as if words would arrive the way ideas do
the way novels seem whole

the labor is supposed to happen without me
the final product should spill forth perfect
complete