This poem from 1993...

UNIVERSAL GRIND   October 21, 1993

 

Can opener wedged into

slit and slit only a dent

across the several gallon firmament.

 

Folger's Universal Grind

holds the larger plant up

to the kitchen light,

 

the Eastern Magician

carries the stars in a row.

But the sense within it

 

of the useless opener

thwarted and outsmarted

tinctures the idea of it.

 

Deaths falls out of the glass

like snow -  it fell and fell,

that box of candles

 

all the listed glass unwraps

tissue papers, all are crowds

of tears all balled

 

tear-filled hankies

on the floor.  Ice crackles

in the glass,  ice water

 

down again on the mat.

I want my pieces I've salvaged.

I dreamed last night

 

that a man carried off

my revere ware pots, I cried

those belonged to my mother.

 

And after it all, all pieces,

the sorrow chases me

without a brain, undoes

 

my strenuous agony,

the ministry, from its carport,

cries for charity.

 

My mind walks

to the cemetery again

to clear a leaf off our name.