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ONE BAD POEM

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"The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination.
But the combination is locked up in the safe."

-Peter de Vries

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John Haines, 1924-2011

"Good benches and chairs, as well as poems, come from roots. A man who has mistaken his life and who does not believe in what he is doing, who wishes he were somewhere else, doing another thing, is not likely to build good chairs nor to grow good turnips." http://www.adn.com/2011/03/03/1734017/alaska-poet-john-haines-dead-at.html

Franz Wright, "Night Walk"

My friend Carolynne sent me this poem. It made her remember how important friendship is, and I can feel that, too, but where it really sent me was to my days as a waitress, before I found love, before I married and had children. Funny how a poem can feel like a transport to another place and time I have almost forgotten -- waiting on a family dashing in for hamburgers between games in their son's Little League playoffs on a Saturday afternoon -- driving home one evening through a quiet neighborhood and seeing the lights in other people's kitchens and dining rooms. Night Walk The all-night convenience store's empty and no one is behind the counter. You open and shut the glass door a few times causing a bell to go off, but no one appears. You only came to buy a pack of cigarettes, maybe a copy of yesterday's newspaper -- finally you take one and leave thirty-five cents in its place. It is freezing, but it is a good thing to step outside again: you can ...

With a new book coming out -- and about 30 poems to retire from my send-out notebook -- it seems a good time to retire some other poems as well. I wrote this poem toward the beginning of my one-bad-poem years, in 2005. I've always been fond of it, but it's gone out a kajillion times (well, 12 or so times) and no one has ever begged to publish it. So, enough's enough and I'm publishing it here. I've always loved mornings best, and fresh beginnings, and this poem dwells on such small things. Unbruised If death is what makes life precious, will we in heaven stop loving so what we no longer fear losing? When life stops being a miracle, will the bloody brilliance of a beating heart no longer astound us? In heaven will we savor the taste of strawberries, the scent of coffee, the slap of wet sheets on a clothesline? Will sleep, that small death, still be allowed us, or will waking, constant, irrevocable, gild nothing, no morning clamor of crows...

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