Crepuscular Stretch Of The Wildest Imagination

If you ask me, those bunches 

Of wild early evening mint 

Over there sure look like 

A herd of shaggy fauna 

Grazing in a green meadow— 

 

So much in fact, the next thing you know is 

They’ll be hoofing it straightaway 

To the palms of our hands, bent on munching 

The living daylights out of them 

As they make their luminous way here. 

 

 

 

Late Life Meditation: Winner Take All

Shut 

Your eyes tight 

Enough 

To keep in all 

The light 

You thought 

You lost.

 

 

 

Noncommittal Not So Plumb Haywire

It’s been quite a while since 

Any wide-eyed wannabee 

Poet’s asked me what 

It’s like being a poet and I must say 

It’s no great surprise, seeing 

I’ve been out of the public eye so 

To speak here in my sanctum sanctorum, 

The boondocks of the southern Peloponnese, 

These past 50 years but if 

Anybody should go to all the trouble now 

To show up on my doorstep and ask me 

I’d surely tell them to think 

Twice before committing themselves. 

 

 

 

 

Measure Of Poverty In The Boondocks Of The Southern Peloponnese, Circa 1965

In a land overflowing 

With a blessèd abundance 

Of olive trees, not having one 

To call your own and where 

Those who had finished 

Gathering theirs had packed up 

The bulging sacks, 

Hand-woven heavy

Ground-covering cloths

And gone home, to go there afterwards,

Get down on your hands and knees 

And salvage the precious few 

Shiny fruits that had over- 

Flowed and escaped 

The nets of the plenty.

 

Where There's A Will. . . .

Begin a poem 

With “To be or not 

 

To be” and more 

Than likely 

 

You’ll end up not 

Knowing who not to be.