Today, for a while, I thought if I could only write a sonnet,
my life would be measurably better. If only I could hear
the little iambs, in their soft Italian shoes, skipping across the page,
if only the couplets, with their matching handcuffs, weren’t so keen
on restraining my thoughts and making beggars of my words,
how neatly my days would fall in line, doubling up in doublets
of meted time and a tidy turn of mind, sweet or salty little songs.
Penning a sonnet would be like shaking the hand of Shakespeare
or lifting the hem of Barrett Browning’s Portuguese dress.
Instead, my poems are rambling affairs, unruly hounds
of questionable origin, refusing to be pent up in a box
and following their noses to some rank or delectable matter
(sometimes one thing and the same). They are either stupid
or free-spirited, but either way, they have no sense of
time.
                        

When you came home from the hospital,
my wife says, your foot was like a potato
 
with toes. My first thought is of an ocarina,
round and brown and known in olden times
 
as a sweet potato, my next being the song
“Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer.”
 
But why not think of my body as a vessel
for music to pass through, like a bone
 
scoured clean by sand, long and hollow,
picked free of marrow, that hums
 
a haunting lament every time the wind
rushes by on its way to tomorrow.