The scheduled reader for the Distinguished Writer Series was not able to be present yesterday evening. It was the sunny last part of a beautiful day, the attending audience read extra poems for the open mike. This was one of the poems I read from my earliest chapbook, After I Have Voted:
TO HAVE YOU HEAR
two sounds at once,
walking and not walking,
I stop in the parking lot gravel.
There is a fire back of the log,
a sandy beach, behind trees big with summer.
Two big umbrella butterflies (like Haiku elephants)
flutter one by one
among the leaves, their shadows, and the air.
On the green slopes
the sprinklers turn like maypoles.
It has been summer for weeks now,
and you refuse to talk about it.
After I Have Voted was published by The Gemini Press in Seattle, 1972, in summer 1968 I wrote some of the poems when I stayed with my parents in Tacoma after my first year at University of Washington.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I have admired your poetry since discovering "Bad Boats" in the late seventies. Thank you for posting this poem. Haiku elephants are charming.
Post a Comment