Two more poems-- the first one is a prose poem.
It's called "Each Day Does That."
What I wanted to do in this poem, I think,
is something I eventually want to be able to do in my poetry.
And something it takes some time, I guess,
and a certain kind of sophisticated innocence,
was to treat the subject matter in the poem
somewhat ironically, but come out
by the end of the poem speaking fairly openly and frankly,
and if the case was that kind of a case, speaking sentimentally.
"Each Day Does That"--
It seems before sleep, something has been dishonest.
I'd like it to have been the day.
It's the recognition of a circle, some mild agreement
I made as a child to behave by which
I could assign myself the center of all things,
a passive nature.
I sometimes write from an occupation--
mailman, a cardiac, those whose lives
are honest, because without perspective, they begin
to value their loneliness.
They grow tragic and beautifully antique.
If these could meet, say in a conspiracy designed to fail,
they might agree I never met a man I didn't like,
of all confessions the worst.
Had I arrived, I'd say resignation,
the acceptance of the reasonably tragic is why I made you.
And they tear up their former maxims and begin to compete.
Once I wanted my readers to cry.
Now it's my persona.
Things are getting hot.
But the truth is I'm getting older.
Most of my definitions turn out to have been early promises,
now more and more forgettable.
Just before sleep, when I'm afraid, a few of those
poems which I had thought to be distant turn
their small, interested faces, never plain
enough or true enough.
But their intention turns my body,
which had been weak with stubbornness, toward home.
My parents lie like children in the dark.
I'm not close enough to hear them speak.
But their love for each other, which once seemed small to me,
is there.
And I can sleep.