Poems ✍️

My library door’s still open
with its invitations and its promises

and empty shelves waiting to be filled
and on the table two or three new books

yet unread; but I’m done with poetry-reading now.
I’m sleepy; I’m full of poetry;

smell of poetry; taste of poetry;
close to, you can hear me buzz..

I can’t get the sound of other poets
out of my head.

Sometimes it’s envy; sometimes
just annoyance, like the sound

of the man next door with his buzz-saw;
and I can’t help hearing, too,

the sound of postboy bringing yet more books
by other poets; the presses rumbling

with yet more poetry books to come..
some, I fear, they’ll ask me to ‘review’..

yes, I’ve had too much of what
I helped to start – that great harvest

of ‘American Poetry’ ten thousand thousand
graduates of college courses;

chapbooks, self-print, little mags, by the barrel-load
and so many bad apples to each barrel;

fruiting like sour crabs
on the dead wood of faculty appointments;

how much wood can this woodchuck chuck,
amidst the woods and two paths’ luck?

jeez, I’m sleepy; feel a long sleep coming on;
the book I’m holding slides from my hands,

its pages turn without my turning them;
like you, my fingers, mind… frost-bitten.