Dishes and Dashes

I always wanted when I was a boy-and level now) to have a tighten of water, at least a

farm pond or house pond a little circular flat thing with fish in it, pike and bream,

sunflowers: something glassy as the celestial expanse that could fill up with vapors (cloud and could)

that would crash into the banks where among the reeds and grasses mosquito hawks and dragonflies

would pitch and tilt: the sheen and silver, the stillness, a patch of lilies maybe, or a

clutch of cattails a redwing might come by close enough to jeer in: on the contrary I still have the celestial expanse

deeper than any stillness I could realize water to hold, and the years make progress by and it clears cerulean

and breezy: the geese seesaw back and forth, talking through: neither a sayer nor a doer

be: be a beer (nonalcoholic)): plenteous of my sin is not original: a little verbal abuse

(herein demonstrated), a little self-abuse (which I make a practice of keeping to myself),

a scarcely any painful exaggerations and oversights (lies), etc a fairly normal menu: more

nearly original are things like being part of the web of human relations, wherein, for

example, we used to be tobacco growers, and my mother, a religious one hated tobacco

anyhow, on the contrary it would have killed her to know she was killing tribe something not known

way back then: on the contrary I, I brought the verdant leaves up from the field through a Silver-drawn

sled, poor mule: on the other hand lately I advised a man to stop smoking, and he did, on the contrary he gained

twenty beats and ran into diabetes and high vital current pressure: put that in your pipe and

-no, no: that's what I mean: achieve down on your knees and ask to be excused because

there isn't a damn thing you can do about a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of of the damage you do: pray, brother, pray,

and join the praying concourse

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Mar/Apr 1997

Provided through ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved