I've read several poems about--
I've tried to write several poems
about my beloved high school girlfriend.
And I shall end with one in her sacred memory.
I believe that wherever she is tonight--
I sound like Garrison Keillor when I did that.
I believe that wherever she is tonight, she's thinking of me.
This is a set with two parts.
The first part is called "First Fraudulent Muse."
Not 17, she dumped me.
No one has to tell me a thing about the sorrows, aches,
indiscretions, and calamities of young poets in the United States
in the late 20th century.
The poem I wrote then--
the one that would make her want me,
either for my wry sensitivity or the scholarly erudition
of my heart--
is not this one.
It made some obscure reference to the goddess Diana,
while drizzling bad terza rima about some poor decrepit wino
eviscerating a garbage can.
My good friend looked at it and made
me know what a damn idiot I sure was.
His maxims come back: read everything, love language,
revise, abide in the Transforming Fire.
And hers mutated by distance.
While I was attaching the syllables of a certain mulberry
tree to an adjective that I loved,
she went and married electrician.
Still I had to make a living, mindful
of the preserving potential of the art and language clattering
onto the platen, like the small dark horse of the embalmer salt.
Always it is the same night.
I called her Lily of the Valley and named her in many songs.
She keeps turning her cold beautiful shoulder
into someone else's words.