SOMETHING YOU COULD DANCE TO

 

A small bird -- possibly a female robin --

Called to me that she was the legal representative

Of Sara Teasdale and that I should know

Her client had insisted that her books of poems

Include a notice that "For permission to set

Any of the poems to music, application

Should be made to the author." I said I

Had no intention of setting anyone's poems to music

Any anyway Sara Teasdale has been dead

Since 1933. The bird said "We're working on that and,

In any event, we're putting you on notice. There is

Something about your eyes we don't trust; something

That says  'I wonder what the October poem

Would sound like as a maxixe?'"

HYDE PARK

 

A half-hundred years ago I 

Took long winter walks

Up the Midway or along

Fifty-Seventh Street or down

Cottage Grove Avenue. The sidewalk

Rang under my feet and winds

Blew from Lake Michigan 

The perfect, said Plato,

Cannot change which, if true,

Would be reason to avoid it.

CAROLIIIIINA (THE EXTRA LONG GRAIN RICE)

 

In the far reaches of my mind there is

A band willing to swing into action

Whenever my attention wanders by.

They've somewhere found a sultry girl singer

(The 1950s were awash in sultry girl singers;

You tripped over them everywhere).

She knows most of the lyrics to an old ad

For Carolina Rice and is willing to sing them

Over and over, telling me she comes

From Carolina so I should pardon her drawl;

She's here to sell extra long grain rice to you-all.

True to her original, she refuses to prounce the r

In nourishment so the word becomes nuhishment

As in "For quality and nuhishment it's Carolina Rice."

Nothing will break her of this habit.

ENCOUNTER

 

It was 1955 and you were wearing

A hat with earflaps and

Though you knew it was Death 

It looked so wan and helpless. Sick too,

Huddled in a doorway and coughing.

You nodded; he lifted one hand.

THE ANGEL OF THE OTHER ANNUNCIATION

 

The angel sent to tell Mary that she

Will die soon has chosen to appear as

The stout middle-aged woman from 

Nicholas Maes' Portrait of an Unknown Woman

Her eyes are sad and shrewd, her lips

Pressed together in half-hearted disapproval. 

She tightly holds a closed fan by the wrong end

Ready to poke the butt-end at anyone

Who tries to come too close.

AND DON'T ASK ABOUT THE DUST

 

The Memory Palace I built years ago

Is smaller than I remember it

And surrounded by outbuildings

So that whatever I seek always seems

To have moved to the Memory Garage

Or hides under a clay pot in the Memory Toolshed.

MORNING OF THE WORLD

 

In the beginning there was nothing

Or nothing much -- just some odd-shaped rocks,

A few spools of yellow thread and the shadows

Of things not yet created. God and His dog

Were restless and went for a walk. The rocks

Hurriedly shrugged themselves into mountains

Or powdered themselves into sandy flats

So the two of them had places to walk.

The thread -- it was good thread but nothing 

You couldn't find at a five and ten cent store

If fives and tens and stores had been invented --

Spun a hasty sun into the sky. The shadows

Became chance-met strangers eager to point out

To God and His Dog the local sites which appeared

After they were described. Then some of the shadows

Decided they'd been cats all along.

UNRELIABLE AND COVERED WITH DUST

 

The Memory Palace I built years ago

Is much smaller than I remember it

And surrounded by outbuildings

So that whatever I seek always seems

To have been moved to the Memory Garage

Or lies under a clay pot in the Memory Toolshed.

THE LIMITS OF MEMORY

 

You remember distinctly that

At the end of  long night St. Wyndred,

Coiling herself into being

From the smoke of a blown-out candle,

Offered to perform a small miracle,

Just for you. What you cannot recall

Is what the miracle was or is or will be.

RELATION

I never had an Aunt Edith since she

Who would have been died after a few months

And is buried in a very small grave

Still, I've done my best for her, casting her

In this role and that. (Read my third poem

About the eleven thousand virgins

Who traipse about with Saint Ursula; she

Is the third virgin in the second row, the one

Who's halo is slipping sideways, annoying

The virgin next to her). She'd have been tall

I tell her when she comes by, and funny

And have had a fondness for large hats.

Now, though, she wants to know more

What jobs did she have? (Mostly clerical

Though during the war she learned to weld)

Did she marry? (Twice, once happily)

What was wrong with the bad marriage?

(I'll get back to you on that).

 

CHESSMEN

 

My grandfather Joe would sometimes look

At a chessboard and rearrange the pieces

Two black bishops might change places

Some pawns would yearn forward

Others retreat to the back of their squares

Or sit with deadly calm in the exact middle.

When he played he might put a finger on a piece

To see what it wanted to do. Knights, though

He always took by surprise. Never wise

To know what a knight was thinking

A MOMENT ON THE WAY

Passing the house
Where she'd have lived
If she'd taken another road