Honest Injun Meets Manifest Destiny

No snake oil salesman and still
Wet behind the ears, he was strung up
 

Like pemmican, while forked 

Tongues licked him

Year after year.

 

 

Bookmark, Selected Poems, William Carlos Williams

From dry fragile still
fragrant yellow-

green stalks & leaves placed
between the descent

of winter & the locust tree
in flower stems

the scent of spring.


NB: Just got word that this little poem has been selected for the anthology Visiting Dr. Williams: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of William Carlos Williams to be published by the University of Iowa Press in 2011. Good news received on this sunny spring Monday after Easter Sunday celebrated with a large gathering of friends at our "Milk and Honey" house.*

*So named by us because Meligalas means meli(honey) and gala(milk).

Against All Odds

Of that most distant

Possibility even—
That one left

To fend for oneself
With nothing

To the nth power
Will go to any lengths

To find even that.

Loss

Knowledge is understanding how
Each word traces its own

Means of leaving.

The Poet As a Man Mocked by Dreams

So! His mind had been snapped
up by turtles,
an unheard-of soup, last night
the night before, he had spilled the beans
to the paper staring at him blankly,
a real mess, no matter, i am a poet,
i like to fish, fresh air
feel out the sun, deep cool wells, go on

through tall reeds, banking
on the river

she had said, be careful
the moonbeams,
the road narrowing
along the river and the long grass
gather me
about your knees,
the good, black earth.

later
in the white house,
cobwebs and a lizard's
tail. please eat this
apple.

on the wall, a black
form, weeding.

deep eyes, a neck
braided with wrinkles:
my mother, she said
do drink this water.

no, just sunlight, please.
then the night, a clumsy
spy, a mock turtle losing
its cover.

and a strange cold inside.

(from Sentences, 1976)