Make No Mistake

Make no mistake that poetry is memory

and those who would have it be a more

exalted thing are both dead and wrong.

Poets do not think or see, but only remember.

I remember the summer breezes and the

Memorial Day lilacs up a hill in New Hampshire.

I remember the lawn sprinklers left on

which were vague shapes of bouquets hissing

in the dark air as I walked home at night.

There were times when life seemed like a casino

pumped full of kitsch like oxygen to keep

us from leaving the black jack table.  If I

don’t post these black poems, I may feel

heroic or noble, but . . .

Make no mistake that refugees from Syria,

from Mosul, from Yemen dream of New York

New York and breaking the bank just as we do

but would settle for a piece of stale bread

or the touch of a lost loved one.

As a poet, my hopes seem infinitely smaller.

God forgive me.

FG           4/10/2015