As kids every couple of weeks
we’d take our allowances,
go down to the variety store
and buy the latest DC comic.
Larry and I would spend
that afternoon imagining
we were whatever superhero
was featured in our new,
and now most prized book.
Jimmy was with us
all the way, but admitted
he wanted to be Lex Luthor or
or the Joker, or better still
Solomon Grundy.
So we probably should not
have been surprised that
while I became a lawyer
and Larry a classics professor,
Jimmy became a politician.
On more than one occasion
someone has come up to me
after an open mic reading
to tell me that they love my work.
I am honored and tell them so
but curious as well, since I
only read two poems, which
hardly counts as my work.
I offer to sell them my book
at a substantial discount,
but they inevitably tell me
“Thanks, but I don’t read poetry.”
I will take it,
the aging poet said
to the ever more sparse
crowd at the weekly
open mic,
as a recognition
is the growth
in the quality
of my writing
that I continue
being rejected
but now by a
much higher
quality of
literary journals.
Would it surprise you to learn
that like most writers, I
have spent more than a little
guilty time trying to imagine
what you look like, what you know
you should be doing
while you are reading this poem.
And I do wish I couild see
your face as you read it, knowing
it is a conversation where
you want to speak, to tell me
that you like my work, that
reading me is a complete
and utter waste of time,
but you cannot, so I will
conclude that you do like
my work or else you would
not be reading this in the first place.
It is strange knowing that your vision
is not what it was, not what you
want it to be, not necessarily yours
in the long run, one eye already
semi-useless for reading and distance.
You adapt, get bigger monitors, a tablet
to read the news, a magnifier
when you need to hold newsprint in hand,
a large screen television (okay, you
wanted that regrdless of your vision).
You realize so many songs you once sung
(badly) will no longer make sense, goodbye
“I Can See for Miles,” and no more Johnny Nash,
“I’m looking through you,” nope, and
“If I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”
U2 will just have to find it for me.
I have had two,
although the first is long
forgotten, so perhaps it
no longer counts, it
certainly didn’t to her,
announcing its end
like the conductor
of a train running late
on the mainline to sadness.
Perhaps I have not forgotten
but all I see is myself
standing alone, intoning
words to which the crowd
intently listens, much like
the audience at a reading
by a lesser known poet,
feigned polite awareness.
I’ll just say I’ve had one
for it is easier that way
on all three parties.
A good friend, who we had
not seen in COVID time, visited
and we smiled when we saw
that she was reading Heidi,
catching up she said on a too
abbreviated childhood, one
sacrificed to circumstance
My grandson, soon enough
ten, says he is reading
Beowulf, though not the Heaney
translation, so there are two
more books on my books
you must read before you die list.
Despite reading regularly,
the list grows ever longer,
and I am beginning to think
that if I must complete it,
it may be my best shot, my
only real shot at immortality.
Charing Cross Road
booksellers woven
amid theatres
cramped sagging shelves
an out of print
Christine Evans,
slim, collected works
of those
long forgotten
never noticed
a damp chill
enfolds old leather
as the door opens
and shuts on
a late February.
Morning, my purchases
sink in the plastic bag
dancing as I walk
to the tube
at Leicester Square
with my new gems
destined to cause
a sag
in my bookcase.
an old writer and his words 