Changing Trains

Asleep In Denny's

You only want love,

A brother, a friend.

Underneath the wing

Of darkness like a death,

Cool and warm, a shadow

I'm lying in your arms.

Could this be just a metaphor?

A poem without rhymes.

 

Pending Death

My days of writing poesy

Are at an end. Now what?

I figured when I finished

I would die.

I am finished,

But I am not dead.

I think I read that Junkets wished

To write for several years -

Enough to make him famous -

And then to stop.

Death stopped him sooner.

I am 68

Thinking

Had you as many faults as I,

I'd criticize you plain -

Like something fallen from the sky,

More sweetly glad than rain.

Gently on the phone you spoke

From a drowsy blur.

Had you only just awoke

You would have sounded sure.

When we talk and sit and laugh

There's something to be had

From life, not plotted on a graph,

And not always sad.

 

Intelligent Art

All that recommends my songs

Is I'm supposed to be

Really quite intelligent,

And I'm not sure of that.

Also I am not convinced

Intelligence has much

Bearing on the output of

Human works of beauty.

 

Here

My books are dusty. The record shelves

Are scarred and scratched and old.

The records and the movies too

Now are rarely played.

Sometime during ever day

I make the bed and fold

The afghan. On the windowsill

Lies yellow cat puke crust.

Every morning first at dawn

I change the kitty litter,

Scoop new food in two large bowls

And fill the water fresh.

 

Our Interests

Americans have interests

All around the globe
Which require several wars

In each administration.

With so many interests

In other people's countries

(Ridiculous if bullets didn't hurt)

Why are Yanks

So very much alone?

American Poets

Dickinson and Poe.

Poe for just a small

Volume of strange lyrics,

Strangely beautiful,

But not enough to fill an afternoon.

For Dickinson a myriad

Of little malformed pieces,

And of the lot the few of them

Whose charms can make me love

I can memorize in half an hour.

And Whitman just a hairy formless

Bumptious bunch of words

That only reach the real folk

Who don't like poetry.

After that – 200 years -

Who else wrote poetry?
Yankees have a skewed and jaded

Sense of liberty

That may keep expanding til

There is no freedom left.

Edna Millay

One American poet -

Edna St. Vincent Millay -

In the 20^th Century -

Whose fame was spun like a weather cock

By the fickle breath of critics -

As Keats' was only once.

This one American poet

Stood not on the shoulders

Of giants;

The giants stand on hers.

Every line quintessence -

Every melody sweet

However bittersweet -

True rhymes and flawless rhythms -

And every song germane.

Like Sappho she'll be loved -

Plato's other wonder -

But not for just three thousand years –

Now Libraries abound,

And she's in everyone.

 

Changing Trains

I was in a fen

Fiddling with Millay.

Johnny Keats was lifeless. I had

Sucked the nectar dry.

Although still his songs were beautiful.

Stranded on a rock,

No inspiration left

To spur me into writing.

Although my poems never were like his.

Then an inspiration came -

Millay – herself a Muse -

A new one I had read

Many times and many years before,

Indifferent.

There's beauty in her songs,

A deep simplicity.

And like a soft sun blazing through

The mist on foggy days,

Millay supplanted Keats

And I was in another train.

The selfsame journey – poesy -

And destination – death.

I won't say either's better,

Or deny they're different.

Or think I understand this evolution.