I am sitting on a mossy rock Overlooking a shallow flowing Creek, over which afternoon light Strobes as sun and breeze Play checkers with clouds,

Where I am reading some poems. Going through these sieves of lines And blank spaces around them, I think of intelligence, inherent In everything around me, and

This desire to become a holy fool, For as you said, only fools seem To be happy. Is it because they are Liberated? And would I know what That freedom is if I fall over it?

I set adrift these questions on The water, and get up to go back To my desk where I shall write These thoughts out, after a few More hours of steady work.

Meanwhile time will continue to hold All the answers to all the unasked, And un-askable questions. Meanwhile yellow dust of oak pollen Will cover these poems, and crab apples

Will drop their pink-veined petals Over driveways, into abstract forms. Then perhaps, one day, as I being to Ask you questions, you will point To me a butterfly, white cloaked, on

My shoulder, and perhaps, that day I shall understand all that I must.

On reading a book of highly Praised poems, full of every day Scenes from a best-selling poet’s life;

We soon know that he has a dog, Spends evenings listening to jazz In smoky night clubs, and days gazing

At his kitchen garden, as paper spools In an antique typewriter, waiting for him To knock back a few new ones

For the next book, or for some Literary magazine or the other That hardly anyone reads.

And as we come to the book’s end, Forgetting everything that came Before: the commonplace, the banal

Was apparently somehow heightened In speech by chopping it up into verse, We read this note on the type:

“The larger display sizes are Extremely elegant, and form A most distinguished series Of inscriptional letters.”