How Poetry Saved My Life (in London)

in cars, airports, airplanes, trains

this tote carried me and my goods

in iambic pentameter, Wallace Stevens,

I wish that I might be a thinking stone

 

(to admire far-below surroundings

of fair-furrowed hay-gold,

corn-green fields: why

you prospered, why

Saxons wanted you)

 

holiday humanity at the wax-works

shouting and camera-flash but here

in his corner, Dickens, and yea verily

Shakespeare, standing

 

then after the kerfuffle over Baker Street

while hungry, footsore we rattled

in the packed train all subterranean

children on our way to who knows

where or why: a song of apple boughs

pasted on the wall, Dylan Thomas,

and I was green and carefree

under the new made clouds

and happy as the heart was long

Literary in the Forest

Miss Havisham, dear Ophelia, let us flee

this dark house, the cruelty of misplaced

desire, the paneling of which is suitable

only for our coffins. Let us find another wood,

a brighter home of our own choosing, lush

with fern, moss-hushed, honeysuckle glinting,

scenting the sunlight and the hill-born(e)

breeze. Let us step from the shade into glade

of pink foxglove, listen for rocks’ water-song

and silence of trees.

                                            There is no revenge in pity,

no sympathy in surrender, so cast off your wrecked

dresses, your sodden tresses; care not about full-

filling hours. We will study butterfly wings, speech

of birds. We will deck ourselves with wild roses—

or toss them at the b(r)ook.