"Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?"

Give up dutifully sitting at your desk.  Leave
your house or apartment.  go out into the world.

It's all right to carry a note book but a cheap
one is best, with pages the color of weak tea
and on the front a kitten or a space ship.

Avoid any enclosed space where more than
three people are wearing turtlenecks.  Beware
any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks
across the muffled tennis courts.

Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.
And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle
where a child a year or two old is playing as his
mother browses the ranks of the dead.

Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.
The title, the author's name, the brooding photo
on the flap mean nothing.  Red book on black, gray
book on brown, he builds a tower.  And the higher
it gets, the wider he grins.

You who ask for advice, listen: When the tower
falls, be like that child.  Laugh so loud everybody
in the world frowns and says, "Shhhh."

Then start again.



Ron Koertge

Lost Childhood

Lost Childhood

How was it possible, I, a father
yet a child of my father?  I
grew panicky and thought
of running away but knew
I would be scorned for it
by my father.  I stood
and listened to myself
being called Dad.

How ridiculous it sounded,
but in front of me, asking
for attention--how could I,
a child, ignore this child's plea?
I lifted him into my arms
and hugged him as I would have
wanted my father to hug me,
and it was as though satisfying
my own lost childhood.


--David Ignatow

Hesitation

 Hesitation

I was on my way
home
from a jog

sweat pooling on my upper lip
and everything

As I crossed the street
two cyclists approached
the
      corner

                                              a boy in front
a girl pedaling behind him

and I hesitated,
unsure of whether to keep walking
or let them pass         in front of me

(The sidewalk
was not big enough for all of us)

Finally,
I paused,

let them pass--
     him
           then her
their bicycle wheels like spoked moons...

And to think that
I might have kept going

To think that
I might have
cut off their path

To think that
I might not have
let them
pass!



--Mariel Boyarsky