Perpetually and Forever

In a bookstore in Mahwah,

Not far from where Johnny went

Looking for a job once but

Nevermind, there was a slim

Paperback of poetry

Titled, A Coney Island

Of the Mind. This was forty,

Forty-some years ago, now.

The book looked interesting,

The tumbling sprawl of the poems,

More disorderly than verse,

Way too much white space for prose.

The book wound up on a shelf

And then another shelf and

Then another, in this state

And that apartment, that state

And that and that apartment,

In and out of old boxes,

Until the pages yellowed

And were last seen in storage

Somewhere in southwest Utah.

And all those decades, Lawrence

Was still living and waiting

For his typewriter to write

The great indelible poem,

Living and waiting his whole

Century, and now he’s gone.