Blackberry Vines

We would assume the beggar

Sleeping by the overgrown

Schoolhouse, in Whittier’s poem,

Is Theodor Kittlelsen’s

Fattigmannen in waiting.

That gray-haired man at the end

Of the sentimental scene,

Remembering the sweet girl

Who felt badly for being

A better speller, because

She loved him, is also him,

Perhaps hallucinating

On approach to starvation.

There’s an acid-green volume,

Likely dyed in arsenic,

Of Whittier’s poems buried

Somewhere in all used bookstores

In the U.S.—John Greenleaf

Printed in gilt lettering

On the front—or used to be.

The ragged beggar’s in there.