MAKING HAY

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads


I'd like to be mysterious
like some I see who never
respond to comments
but just let you wonder who they are
behind the brilliance of their pen
and though my heart is not exactly splayed
upon my sleeve
it's still up there somewhere
waiting to be played


I'd like to lead a hard life
in the Appalachians
and see what kind of verse would
well up from my underground
all blackened and irredeemable
like a coal miner's fingers

I'd like to freeze my ass off
on the ski slopes
somewhere in the Rockies
and then warm it next to the fire
in the lodge with the sound of
tinkling glasses and laughter

Someone said that a poet
is a whole world
inside of one person
choose your words
and your worlds carefully

But then there is me

I'd like to be the proverbial
traveling salesman making hay
with the farmer's daughter

And I can hear you say
I KNEW something like that
was going to come out of you

That's exactly what she said too