on one of the hottest September days we've had in years.
I've never read any of your poems
until today.
I guess I can blame many things:
graduating high school when Wakefulness was published.
I was the opposite of woke.
But, I read today.
I was seven when that snow fell near Lake Ontario
and you ran through thistles one moment
and across a sheet of ice the next.
I read today.
I was a new father when you wrote They Knew What They Wanted.
And while you were watching Turner Classic Movies
I was watching Little House on the Prairie
in between feedings, wondering how Pa managed it all.
I read today.
So, what am I, the reader, to make of this?
The rest is only drama; the noise which distracts us
from our inner poetry.
Some days I wish for a breezeway;
others, I try and slow
to see my banalities with fresh eyes.
The days go by and I go with them.But today?
Today I read.
1 comment:
This is a very raw and new poem. Earlier today, I learned that John Ashbery passed. I was shocked that, although I knew him as a poet, I had never read any of his poems. I couldn't think of a single one. So, I quickly grabbed the Internet with both hands and poured through a dozen of his poems he wrote throughout his lifetime. I have also loved Auden's poem commemorating Yeats, so I wanted to try something like that. I wanted to get this poem out into the blogosphere today, quickly, with rough revisions as I copied it from my journal.
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