sunday, october 26
sunday morning in late october
the burnt taste of instant coffee
bright day on the edge of things —
dead leaves and cold air, undecided wind
i've been reading w. s. merwin
that poem about the boy
who sees houses which are not there
i'm thinking about ray bradbury,
roger zelazny, the doors of the year
hanging open like the windbattered entrance
to an old barn
martin luther standing with a stack of
manifesto, a hammer and a handful of
nails, looking puzzled at the pale
gray boards under their faded paint
and dry corn in the fields,
frostburned vegetables, half-dead grasshoppers
a night in colorado springs
not long before the war began,
molly in her witch dress,
kitchens in kansas and
basements in nebraska,
all these private referents
worn out with the constant
use of memory.