Burly older bearded men who teach
The manliest arts of poetry
Have been known to get nearly teared up,
Chortle wryly, shake their heads, and sigh
At that line, I have wasted my life.
The I is a compass in that poem.
Its needle of the body, never
Described, delineates, to my right,
Over my head, into the distance.
This is, indeed, how an embodied
Mind understands its home in the world.
We get the picture, alright, and may
Fit ourselves exactly to the depth
Of field, but the chicken-hawk’s too much.
Hawks float over fields to hunt. Poets
Know this as much as anyone might.
We’d wager a hawk over a field
Is highly unlikely to be lost
Or looking to find home, whatever
Old English kenning you, the poet,
Might well have been trying to evoke.
Leave the chicken-hawk out of it, man.
You composed a poem in a hammock.
It was a pleasant afternoon. You
Made some hay, some green, a little scratch,
And some reputation from those lines.
You were no doubt smoking as you wrote,
Looking for those exact, simple words
To center readers in your idyll
With vague shadows hanging over it,
Leaving out your flesh and cigarettes,
So other minds had blank room to rest—
No doubt smoking like a chimney stack,
Young man then, young man long gone. Hawk, smoke,
Words all hauled your body, wasted, home.
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