UNDELIVERED

 

On July 16th, 1834 Jones Very found a shell and

Pressing it to his ear, heard a voice say

"Do not, whatever you do, marry Ted Hughes!

Pass this message faithfully on to other poets and you

Will appear --in brief excerpts --  centuries from now

In anthologies of Early American Literature.

Do not break the chain! Brasseya Allen did

And nothing much happened to her. Ever." 

So Very left a note to William Cullen Bryant

Who gave it to Edgar Allan Poe who

Lost the note but mentioned it to

James Russell Lowell (despite Lowell writing

That Poe's poems were two-fifths sheer fudge)

Who left word to Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson,

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Walt Whitman, and

Cosmo Perlow Baker (who never wrote anything

But meant to). Ezra Pound overheard it in his cradle and told

Amy Lowell who -- sniffily -- told Elinor Wylie and

Edna St. Vincent Millay who both meant

To repeat it but somehow never did so that

What happened to Sylvia Plath is Simply Not Her Fault.

PHOTOGRAPH

 

My father took a picture of ruins

Fifty years ago. Today I stand

Next to his ghost as the shutter clicks

And say " nice lighting! Good focus!

But where are we?"

AN EPIPHANY

 

Thursday at about six o'clock

A very small goddess -- a bit more

Than seven inches tall --

Appeared in the Yoshiwara

She hasn't spoken but somehow

Everyone is convinced that she

Is looking to rent space

And set up shop. Rumor credits her

With any number of miracles

But only a handful can be proven.

When I dreamed of her a loose button

On my shirt sewed itself tight.

MYSTERIES

 

God, who knows everything, still wonders

If the servant girl in the Haarlemkirch

Really likes the stories He tells her or

Is it just an excuse to sit for a while?

"I'd have finished my errands sooner, Ma'am,

But you know how God loves to talk!"

Also, when that tall waitress 

In the Sakai-ya Teahouse suddenly stands

Quite still, staring into space, one hand raised

And the other hidden in her sleeve--

What is she thinking about?

A MORNING IN THE SECOND MONTH

 

Such a wind! A samurai loses his footing

And goes rolling down the street

Still clutching his swords. A pedestrian,

As if used to such things, ignores him.

He looks at the sky, trying to read

Words torn from their poems

Making a long and mapless journey.

LOOKING FOR GOD

 

After leaving my grandfather's manufactory, God

Wandered for a long while, stopping now and then

To make money for the next stage of His journey;

When all else failed He'd find work as a scarecrow

So when I went looking for Him I talked to scarecrows

Who'd left their fields for life in the City.

They said God had excelled at scaring crows but at last

Had changed sides and, rising into the air on black wings, 

Zig-zagged towards the west, cawing harshly.

OH. HIM.

 

The one of my grandfather Joe's generation

You'd think I'd be likely to not remember

Would be Solomon-called-Sam

Who died at 13 in 1901 when Joe was 7 but

He insists upon himself as a fact, arguing

That since his four brothers

And two sisters are now long dead 

He has an equal right to appear in family poems

Or dreams -- small roles usually and often

Simply as part of a crowd. No, it's Pinney, 

Colorless and quiet and kind

Whom I actually knew whom I usually forget

(If he were one of Disney's dwarfs he'd be Bashful)

I have tried to write of him but every time

Some other relations hijack the poem.