"Acquired Tastes."
"I say goodbye first to things I've missed,
trips I didn't take, and all the books still waiting in shelves.
Perhaps there's an island where I could be God, the flickering
wit of an ancient littoral.
So late in life, I came to important things.
Fly casting, cheap wine, necessary indolence,
a return to the sea, vines, tangled snakes,
poison the Earth builds at night, roots of a stump,
clouds, what must be touched, ingested, trout, carp, pearls,
believable coal.
All you are tired of, all you haven't had.
Visionary plants you haven't tried.
Sex you haven't imagined.
Limited space.
Another bird you haven't named.
Charts, maps, the sea without them.
The distance from Moscow to Leningrad.
Toys you must have.
Imagined loves and something in the mailbox waiting."
That mailbox seems to be a big thing with poets.
Most upsetting thing to a poet is if the mail's late,
it seems, generally.
Or if it's a holiday.