The Poet

The Poet
by Tom Wayman

Loses his position on worksheet or page in textbook
May speak much but makes little sense
Cannot give clear verbal instructions
Does not understand what he reads
Does not understand what he hears
Cannot handle “yes-no” questions

Has great difficulty interpreting proverbs
Has difficulty recalling what he ate for breakfast, etc.
Cannot tell a story from a picture
Cannot recognize visual absurdities

Has difficulty classifying and categorizing objects
Has difficulty retaining such things as
addition and subtraction facts, or multiplication tables
May recognize a word one day and not the next

After Reading Tu Fu...

And then I found my summer poem.


(photo courtesy of evissa on flickr)

After Reading Tu Fu, I Go Outside to the Dwarf Orchard
by Charles Wright

East of me, west of me, full summer.

How deeper than elsewhere the dusk is in your own yard.

Birds fly back and forth across the lawn

                                     looking for home

As night drifts up like a little boat.



Day after day, I become of less use to myself.

Like this mockingbird,

                   I flit from one thing to the next.

What do I have to look forward to at fifty-four?

Tomorrow is dark.

              Day-after-tomorrow is darker still.



The sky dogs are whimpering.

Fireflies are dragging the hush of evening

                                       up from the damp grass.

Into the world's tumult, into the chaos of every day,

Go quietly, quietly.

Coffee & Dolls

A poem I found while searching for the keyword "summer" on The Academy of American Poets website.


(photo courtesy of SeenyaRita on Flickr)

Coffee & Dolls
by April Bernard

It was a storefront for a small-time numbers runner,
pretending to be some sort of grocery. Coffeemakers
and Bustello cans populated the shelves, sparsely.
Who was fooled. The boxes bleached in the sun,
the old guys sat inside on summer lawn chairs,
watching tv. The applause from the talk shows and game shows
washed out the propped-open door like distant rain.

It closed for a few months. The slick sedan disappeared.
One spring day, it reopened, and this time a sign
decorated the window: COFFEE & DOLLS.
Yarn-haired, gingham-dressed floppy dolls
lolled among the coffee cans. A mastiff puppy,
the size and shape of a tipped-over fire hydrant,
guarded as the sedan and the old guys returned.

I don't know about you, but I've been looking
for a narrative in which suffering makes sense.
I mean, the high wail of the woman holding her dead child,
the wail that filled the street. I mean the sudden
fatal blooms on golden skin. I mean the crack deaths,
I mean the ice-cream truck that cruised the alphabets
and sold crack to the same deedle-dee-dee tune as fudgsicles.
I mean the raw scabs of the beaten mastiff, and many other
things.

Waking Up In The Greenhouse

Waking Up In The Greenhouse

Everyone should know what it is
to be ushered into morning
by warm sun and cool water,
clear sky and the jades and the olives
of this house of green and silver.

The birds wide awake with beating wings.
The farmers shoveling sweet feed to the cows.
The brightest flowers born in the gentle sun.
The softest sky and the fairy breeze.

All of these things ease me into wakefulness,
teaching me to take life at its own rhythm,
as slow-coming and certain-eyed as the dawn.

(c.l.)