03-07-2018, 04:25 PM
At the Poetry Farm
He was invited here, but never came.
Beneath the maple tree, a desk and chair
combined, an outdoor office, like a game
so we could write as words appear up there
as pictures in the sky - the slow mauve fade,
the tic-tac-toe of contrails crossing high,
that slow climb up the silhouetted tree
of full moon, like a possum, slipping by
and where the lake must be, a tumbling mist.
Within it, I can see dark figures dance;
too far away to tell if kiss or fist
connects them, or just sparrow circumstance
but here and now I feel, as if we touch,
the bones of yesterday still teach me much.
Delivery
Sparrow sent me a bunch of poems
when I paid for his Greyhound ticket
to get him to the Poetry Farm. Next day
I learned he’d cashed it in, scored,
got arrested busking, and that night
in a jail cell, wrote the only ending.
He was invited here, but never came.
Beneath the maple tree, a desk and chair
combined, an outdoor office, like a game
so we could write as words appear up there
as pictures in the sky - the slow mauve fade,
the tic-tac-toe of contrails crossing high,
that slow climb up the silhouetted tree
of full moon, like a possum, slipping by
and where the lake must be, a tumbling mist.
Within it, I can see dark figures dance;
too far away to tell if kiss or fist
connects them, or just sparrow circumstance
but here and now I feel, as if we touch,
the bones of yesterday still teach me much.
Delivery
Sparrow sent me a bunch of poems
when I paid for his Greyhound ticket
to get him to the Poetry Farm. Next day
I learned he’d cashed it in, scored,
got arrested busking, and that night
in a jail cell, wrote the only ending.