January 9, 2019 – Tricia McCallum

There is a Poet I’m Reading

January 9, 2019 No Comments

There is a poet I am reading

after coming upon his dog-eared collection

while cleaning a bookcase.

I had forgotten even owning it.

His name won’t mean anything to you, never famous or fashionable.

But it draws me after all these years,

this slim dusty volume so long abandoned.

And how quickly I am reminded of his sublime voice, resurrected now

line by line in the slate gray light of this autumn afternoon.

His father’s nurse says she’s too tall for marriages.

The younger poets are ample in their margins.

The migrating salmon leap like sparks from some windy chimney.

The sound of his son’s bat on a baseball, sweet as any teacake,

the ball’s arc making the field small.

It’s gratitude I feel to find him once again,

his particular genius now back in my life.

I won’t be rich or famous, you said, sad on your birthday.

And I don’t have a baby. Now it’s too late.

I pull you close. We have missed nothing. This is our only life.

And just when I think he can give me no more

Comes his closing prayer:

May grace be drawn to our ill-suited hands.

Fleming left his dirty dishes in the sink and found penicillin.
Modern medicine was never the same.
The inventor of Coca Cola just wanted to cure headaches.
Velcro,
because a dog owner scrutinized
the tenacious burrs
embedded in his retriever’s coat.
The most profound discoveries
are pure accident.
Go looking for one thing and find another,
Maybe better.
On my way to a purebred prize winner
A mongrel butted in.
Best dog ever.
I thought the invitation said Thursday.
And found you.
Leave room for error.
Cast off loosely.
Await the entirely unexpected,
The astonishingly,
The utterly new.