112. The Past’s the Best Window to the Future
I’ll do anything for poetry
A human’s another thing
Break it
Break it
Break it again
One day when I was 23
I wrote 17 poems
Tess Gallagher seem displeased by that number
(of poems)
I was young then
I didn’t have the stamina I have now
More than double my life later
I can easily write 72 poems in a day now
I just make sure none of them is larger than the grasp of a hand
With a rumble, the whistle of the train moves out of town
From a vantage point on the ridge
And looking down into the park
The empty blue pool was round and wide
Like an ocean, an ocean through the trees
With the windows open
The evening smelled of grass
Not cut grass, but blowing grass
Always the reminder
Of a skunk
The remainder
Sambuca helps with digestion
But only if you drink it after eating
A dark room neither small
Nor large because the darkness
Made that pointless but a bit of
Sambuca and its thick sweetness
A fence surrounds us with cedar
Tom Beckett can write one poem in a year
But it is a poem someone might remember
If you listen, you can hear the rhyme in your ear
You may recall
That we were in Denver together once
And surrounded by bail bondsmen
Somehow the place seemed right
Sometimes places and people seem right
On a walk today we moved out
Into the magic hour when the light is low
But powerful and seems somehow artificial
Yet more real than it usually is
And we saw this world under a large fingernail moon
If a cloud had not obscured the moon
We might have thought ourselves in a movie
And heading to an expected ending
I’ve lost sleep for poetry
I’ve given up food
I’ve asked my children to spell my words for me
I walked across the Empire State Plaza today
From the Cultural Education Center
Past the Capitol to the Education Building
And I sang as I walked
I sang to the beat of my walking shoes
I jumped atop pillars and over barriers
And I sang
Because poetry is the sound of the mouth
Or the sound of the mouth in the eye
And I’ll do anything for poetry
Even eat lunch in Albany with you
Remember? It was at Jack’s
A human’s another thing
Break it
Break it
Break it again
One day when I was 23
I wrote 17 poems
Tess Gallagher seem displeased by that number
(of poems)
I was young then
I didn’t have the stamina I have now
More than double my life later
I can easily write 72 poems in a day now
I just make sure none of them is larger than the grasp of a hand
With a rumble, the whistle of the train moves out of town
From a vantage point on the ridge
And looking down into the park
The empty blue pool was round and wide
Like an ocean, an ocean through the trees
With the windows open
The evening smelled of grass
Not cut grass, but blowing grass
Always the reminder
Of a skunk
The remainder
Sambuca helps with digestion
But only if you drink it after eating
A dark room neither small
Nor large because the darkness
Made that pointless but a bit of
Sambuca and its thick sweetness
A fence surrounds us with cedar
Tom Beckett can write one poem in a year
But it is a poem someone might remember
If you listen, you can hear the rhyme in your ear
You may recall
That we were in Denver together once
And surrounded by bail bondsmen
Somehow the place seemed right
Sometimes places and people seem right
On a walk today we moved out
Into the magic hour when the light is low
But powerful and seems somehow artificial
Yet more real than it usually is
And we saw this world under a large fingernail moon
If a cloud had not obscured the moon
We might have thought ourselves in a movie
And heading to an expected ending
I’ve lost sleep for poetry
I’ve given up food
I’ve asked my children to spell my words for me
I walked across the Empire State Plaza today
From the Cultural Education Center
Past the Capitol to the Education Building
And I sang as I walked
I sang to the beat of my walking shoes
I jumped atop pillars and over barriers
And I sang
Because poetry is the sound of the mouth
Or the sound of the mouth in the eye
And I’ll do anything for poetry
Even eat lunch in Albany with you
Remember? It was at Jack’s
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