All the world like a woolen lover

       once did seem on Henry’s side.

       Then came a departure.

           --John Berryman, “Dream Song I”

 

Henry heard a terrible sound—

little Henry hid. In all them years

of hiding thoughts they wouldn’t do as he bid,

but came crashing down upon his head,

words popping out like shotgun shells

on a paper bed.

 

(and God forbid, I sometimes dream

of exiting the same, but for a touch

from my son’s small hand; and yet. . .)

 

Oh what a thing it is to do and be, but when to be done?

This Henry pondered often, between a bottle

or three, but no sip could soften

the fall of daylight, murderous bright, the drop

of feat in verse, a body in water, or like his feeling

proverbial shit-on-sole of universal shoe.

 

On a bridge he swayed, did Henry, between genius

and broken glass—and many a time I find

myself standing beside him, faltering in belief

of life; but step into his page flush with words 

like thick grass, so pleasing to run through, 

one cannot help but laugh and lay down after, 

breathe in fresh verse, richly content, and sigh.

​

(if only for one breath’s pause, smooth

on the intake, and ragged as it exits

with extended claws.

That is what brings me through the day:

a poem, a gasp, the stubborn fish-out-of-water

working of my jaws.)