In lieu of a post a poem post

[radiantfracture]

I would like to tell you about a bunch of stuff. Here instead are two poems.

I resist the urge to explain what is wrong with them before you read them, but only just.


Maybe you need to know that Good is the name of the place I am taking the course in Creative Work.



* * * * * *



Poem for Good (Good Poem)


The people who built the table.

The people who built the table
and set the chairs around it.

The people who built the table and set it
and the one who cooked the food
and baked the cake with summer somehow inside
and wrote it all down to help you remember.

And the one who brewed the coffee whose fragrance
filled the room like a memory of warm August earth
and said: yes, I remember. Once I was a dog; now I am a man.

The people who saw that they were wounded
and said: something must be done
and built a table. And said
sit down. There is room.

The hinge sticks here a little
and will not travel smooth; it croaks
things are never that simple, and of course
it is right

But you know this small creature, dozing near death,
who leapt up all at once, shouting
You are not dead! You are only sleeping!
to all of the others lying still in those caverns
and they found it was true.

It is all written here to help you recall

that name spelled with a dry leaf,
a cracked tooth, a star --
the name you were warned
never to use until it was time:
it is time. Use it now.



* * * * * *



Deer Mouse


Last night a deer mouse looked in
at our meeting and withdrew –
then made a wild dash to the stairs
during my turn for advice.

L., our naturalist, identified it:
round ears, rabbit-crouch
a ball of lint as fast as thought
little city mouse, concrete-rover.

(I said it was a vole, but that was only
to comfort the householder.)

I once saw a vole skirt the room-edge
in a dance studio, and once a rat
moved in to my small house

Too large, late-night, and filthy a roommate
to endure, though we rarely saw each other.
He pooped in the corner cupboard.
I killed him behind the couch
with a trap and peanut butter.
It was strange to kill a creature
I knew could laugh, but I did it.

What became of the deer mouse?
So long as I don’t know, I can pick it up by its long tail
and drop it into my poem.
Make it a mascot, dress it in metaphors
call it curious, timid-bold, leap-taker
but if it is already dead, it can’t stand
for the tiny irrepressible life-force in all of us, can it.

Deer mouse, while your fate is uncertain
so is mine.

{rf}