The Poet Warns of Self-absorption

 

My mind does not remember my face.

It proceeds quite happily, unless tweaked,

by a doctor, an ache, a grey hair, mirror.

I can remain the same callow, gullible,

easily-distracted youth I always was.

And it is this person the dogs welcome home

because they haven’t aged either.

                                                      Guy

                                                                                                     

Normally I do not include comments on this page but last Wednesday

we went to the first poetry reading I have actually attended,

Billy Collins, one of my favorite poets, visited the University of Calgary

Thanks for pointing that out Helen.

Not only did he read some of my all-time favorites poems of his,

“I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey's Version

Of "Three Blind Mice”, “Today”, “Another Reason Why I Don't Keep

A Gun In The House”. He also gave some advice, one snippet of which

I used while writing this poem. Lots of his poems including the three

 I mentioned can be found on sites like PoemHunter.com or the website for

Poetry Magazine. The Paris Review also has an interview with him.

" Billy Collins, The Art of Poetry No. 83 available on the Internet.

In Some Far Future Autumn

In Some Far Future Autumn



Standing here with my firefly mind flitting wildly, I wonder what it was I needed in this room, which

errand has slunk silently away with more of my confidence, do animals go through this, does the

squirrel or sparrow have the luxury of confused revelry or endless trips in search of keys or the

word powerbar.



Maybe only long lived animals but its hard to believe that parrots, the bright punctuation of the world

stop lost in thought, perhaps tortoises, after all who would know if they stopped to remember whether

they were seeking food, or sex or fleeing some geologically paced natural disaster measured by

decades.



Will being a poet help, since one is always sifting through one’s mind for a shining tag to end a

metaphor, maybe not, spelling and punctuation were always problematic and remembering the words

of songs or poems, but now the words themselves threaten to disappear.



Words I do not wish to lose have migrated to some farther lobe, artifice has gone taking travail with it,

iambic pentameter has scuttled centipede like into the undergrowth, its many syllables high stepping

rhythmically amid layers of colons and semi colons.



Occluded is almost hidden from sight along with any hope of spelling kaleidoscope or kleptomaniac

without a spellcheck and pronouncing quetzal, forget it and should I meet a pangolin or a

brontotherium in the park I will be reduced to saying that’s a, that’s a followed by a lengthy,

inexplicable description.



And if this is aging, along with sleepless nights and stiff hands let’s hope I reach some equilibrium

amid  loss and gain, and when I finally go, let it not be like an aged cat calling from room to room, let

me drop like a leaf in due season, sere and quiescent, rising only to dance in the wind.



Guy

 Washing Dishes

Outside the window the wind tumbles

the sparrows, seizes the leaves in its teeth

and scours the bricks with the bodies

of summer turned autumn gold.

Later tonight I will waken, anxious

in the winter dawn, and know briefly that

death is closer than birth and that my past

cradles more years than my future.

Outside now the wind has vanquished

both sparrows and leaves, still

a jay confident in cached nuts

screams defiance at the coming cold.

                                                      

 Guy