I'd like to conclude my reading by reading
you a half a dozen poems, or five poems,
or whatever from this new volume.
I was saying, I was in class for a short time.
And I was saying how one never entirely ceases to be a doctor.
If only because one goes home and finds
one's children have the measles or whatever.
Sometimes it's on parents.
Here's a short poem called, A Winter Visit.
"Now she's 90.
I walk to the local park, where too cold, the usual peacocks
do not screech, and they bring the lights come on
before it's dark.
Dare I affirm to her, so aged and so frail,
that from one pale dot of peacock's sperm
spring forth all the colors of a peacock's tail?
I do.
But she like the sibyl says, 'I would die.'
Then complains, 'This winter I'm half dead, son.'
And because it's true, I want to cry.
Yet must not, although only nothing keeps.
For I inhabit a white coat, not a black, even here,
and am not qualified to weep.
So I speak of small approximate things.
Of how I saw in the park four flamingos standing,
one legged on ice, heads beneath wings."