This Is So Strange, Said Her Note

A poem means you’re in too deep

Reads the sign on the fence post

In the scrub woods past the pond.

You knew you weren’t meant to be

Here, this far from a safe street,

A place you could use the phone.

You don’t think the kinds of folks

Who own this sort of spare land

Would be pleased to see you here,

But this seems worse than KEEP OUT.

For one thing—is this the poem?

Was it meant to be a poem?

Or is it some kind of joke?

Or does it mean to warn you

Off, go back, it’s not too late?

Too deep for what? To get lost?

To get out? Too deep in what?

Then what? What if there’s no poem?

It hits you. It’s like those signs

That warn, if you can read this,

You’re too close. It’s just smart-ass.

A poem does not mean you’re in

At all, but the hand that wrote

Wants to scare you, back you off.

If there’s a poem, and who knows

If there is, and you can read,

It’s too late. Of course, it’s not.

You could go on. Where were you?

How’d you get this far? The sign

Is gone. Sun sets on the pond.

The Price of This Is High

And you don’t know what it is.

Poem? Thought? It’s less than straight line

From to point to point through a wave,

And what’s the point of a wave

From a hand tucked in the grave?

We are what we love too much,

What we want too much to have,

To keep. Life? If words beg life,

Can it be said that words live?

Poems make us their own, Kay wrote,

Kay known just as prose and poems.

How much will you pay for us?

We make our beds in your rooms,

Brood thieves who steal through the hive

As grubs to mime your true thoughts,

Ooze to fool your sense of smell,

Urge you to feed us, feed us.

You’ll laugh and say you aren’t fooled.

You’ll laugh in our voice and say

As us you’re not fooled by us.

These Things Run Their Course, and It Has Run Its Course

Who could not run, who could not

Walk much, who used to watch long,

Straight-legged girls and boys run track

As a bored child with a book

In the lap, a bit awed, bit

Throbbed by the sight of those limbs—

Smooth, bare, not like these shroud legs

In loose pants to hide warped shapes—

Has to ask now, near old age,

What the green hell was all that?

Straight legs age as well. They run

Their course. And what is a course?

A game, a track, set of laps.

You get on and you get off,

And you’ve run your course, and then

What? You lie out in the grass

And stretch. Turn back to the book

On your lap, of course. Book laps.

When a germ has run its course,

It’s done. And if the germ’s won?

Take Care or You’ll Have to Give It

When you’re young, you look out
For your old age, at least
Your next age, or you try.

You reach a point at which
You turn, look out for youth,
For what young you has done,

Which you have to put right,
Take care of, or clean up
As best you can. The young

Are told to care for old
Selves they’ll have in the end,
But if the end waits long,

Old selves turn out to be
As Miss Smith to her aunt,
And find that they look out

For one who used to look
Out for them—the more so,
The less care the youth took.