Wednesday’s Man

Wednesday, the crow
caws as if aspiring
to raven croak.

The old one-eyed lush
on the corner gives me
the eye — the

creeps. “Jeepers, weepers
where’d you get those?”

(Peepers)

start up in the
pond, hidden under last
leaves’ detritus.

Look, guy. You have the
eye, remember. “The eye
altering, alters all.”

Drunk, you flout
the obvious. The call
can’t go through.

Trite to summon the
purloined letter, trite
to drink time’s glass dry.

Let us rather locate by
echo. By design.
By ruse. By crook

and hook. By
ways. By rose.
Last call, come and gone.

Bye-bye, Wednesday,
hidden-mid-week,
mid-term, mid-life

ignored smack between
war gods,
American gods,

just gods.

Recall

The old poets hold
court somewhere
where drink flows as

freely as fine
conversation,
conversely. Up

the mountain
above the gorge. Among
the pine, a

hut. Men,
of course. How could
it be other

wise given
provenance, the pose
of the provincial,

the past when
women poets hid in
court suites,

slipped poems under
pillows, billets
doux, and

waited their time to
(forgotten, recalled. Re-
claimed, called.)

come.

Of Course

Off course and speaking,
we women lace

tea and serve
one another across

the aether. We look
askance and laugh.

Looking good, despite
advanced age and

less nourishment
from former glory.

Wisps of white air
brushed off the brow. Wistful

white hair. Wishes full
filled. While on screen

we elders proclaim
disguise in the guise of

truth as we preen in
the mirror of one another.

Despite difference, we
survive. Some of

us even, riven,

thrive.

 

“For I am a sensitive man…” & Enjoy My Jokes

Robert Sward, who published my Trance Form
(Soft Press, ‘76), took me to meet the great Purdy
at his bungalow outside Victoria. While his wife
boiled water in her kitchen for tea, I waited with

Al. He clasped my knee in his huge hand, looked
me in the eye, and announced in that portentous
growl: “Fuck me and I will make sure you’ll get
Canada Council grants.” You know the grin. “AH!”

A last swig finished his bottle. Bemused, I moved
to another chair and uttered not a word. Eurithe
brought her tray, blithely serving us as if the air
were not charged by the triumph of his trickery.

I knew that Al’s was not even a fair proposition:
grants were awarded by jury. We soon departed.
I never saw Purdy again. But I applied for a poetry
grant and got it. And stopped close reading Al.

 

Gone Fishing

Of the old poets, the one
I most
miss is Creeley.

That singular
eye. That dear
clear voice.

That. Oh, and
this. Odin, move
over. Catch as

catch can. Stand
your staff
by. Wander,

Wotan, over
new terrain where
words no

longer count.
                 Where you wonder
why. Or

rather why
not, when over
form. Under

standing. Con-
tent the
content

when the deep-sighted
eye opens
worlds, no need of

catchphrase to recant.
                    Why funnel
many dimensions down

to one small realm of
print?

             Bob,

have I
lost you in clouds of
northern gods?

Not foreign to you but
absent. Irrelevant, off-
beat. And

you.

             Are you still on track,
your once-mortal
remains
                 dissolved into the ineffable
fray,
frayed strings radiating,
some (not you)

say,
glory, unafraid, off
the beaten—

Stop. You’d scoff. Back
up. Back to where the line
tangled as loss abstracted.

“The poet casts, wait for it, wait for it….”

Reel back the real, back
to the little wicker
basket carrying trout,

Creeley, the word defined
from the brink,
out of the drink.

 

 

“Basket of Fish” by mikecogh is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.