SCRATCHMARKS

Cats don’t enter my poems but simply

Decide to let me know they’ve been there

From the beginning. I am not alone in this;

Everyone in the Iliad is so touchy

Because they’re having to fight a war

While trying to avoid stepping on cats.

LATE

Given the circumstances
If I stay up until 3 or so, like as not
Some poem will wander up the steps
To knock very quietly at the door.
Bound elsewhere, perhaps not mine to write
Looking for a kind word, an apple,
Perhaps a cheese sandwich, Velveeta
With tomatoes. My father would be
Wide awake at this hour, like his mother.
I am not native to the night but stay there
On sufferance. I leave the poem asleep
Slumped over its food; if morning
Finds it here still maybe we'll see just what
The two of us can make of each other.

YES WHY?

If you don't want to be written, poem,
Why keep buzzing about my head?
I am not without resources, poem;
Go away or settle here long enough
That I can see you. Work with me
Lest I make you into a limerick
Or summon up the mustached ghost
Of former Governor Thomas E. Dewey
See? The very mention of his name
Has left you frozen in mid-air.

HESITATION WALTZ

Towards the end of her life
Dame Edith had doubts
That she was still real.
On days she wasn't careful
She'd pass through walls
Or surprise her reflection
Looking somewhere else.
She wrote a friend
That the poems didn't care
So long as she wrote them down.

MEETING

The poem arrives first
So defined it's shadow
Could be weighed on a scale.
It’s an important poem,
Or thinks it is.
It fidgets, shoots long cuffs,
Looks at its gold watch,
Shrugs and lights a cigarette.
The poet slowly coheres
From the bluish smoke;
The glance he gives

Is not a friendly one.

GONE

Before I could begin to write
The poem flickered away
Gone, I suppose, to see
If Li Po has returned.

IMAGINED CORNERS

A poem that begins with the sun

Can only dim and dim from there

Unless it finds some other light

That knows more than a trick or two.

Think how surprised the sun was

To be called busy old fool!

But there are other stars of morning

If you know which way to look.

When John Donne bid angels play

Trumpets at Earth’s imagined corners

They came. Seek for them even now

You will find them still, obedient.

POSTHUMOUS WORK

My father, since he died, feels free
To walk into any poem of mine
And look around. He knows that when
My mother turns up, missing him,
He'll turn and smile to see her.
For now, though, he taps three fingers
Against a conceit, listening to hear
If it is as solid as its maker warranted.
He talks with the punctuation marks
To see if they're content or if some comma,
Doing the work of a semi-colon,
Feels it deserves more pay. On occasion,
He will very gently take a word aside
To suggest it might be happier elsewhere.