The Poet


Late middle-age by then,
she’d ridden several cycles
of forgetfulness and fashion
and smartly kept her balance
through them all.
She won the Big Prize
the year she came to call.
And, I had fantasized—I admit— 
about her as a mother.
All those languages!
The Big Impressive Brain!
The doors a mom like She
could open—my entre into fame!
She swept through the house in full poet pose:
wearing caftan, jewelry, cape.
(It was the 80’s then,
so please forgive the clothes.)
She’d been a beauty once,
but handsome now the tag
that fit a woman of her age.
She plucked pronouncements
from her bag, voice husky
with booze and over-use,
Don’t remodel! Travel!
No, better yet, buy art instead!
She unpacked gossip too:
affairs, intrigues, critiques
of mediocre poets, whose work
failed to “lift off” from the page.
Still, I followed her in thrall
hoping for some reflected glory,
perhaps, to be a footnote in her story,
until she began to seem
like other mentors I had loved
and served, but failed to please.


From The Congress of Luminous Bodies