[lit-ideas] Wednesday Poems
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 20:03:15 -0700
06-21
10-11-06
Watermelon working
Those days watermelon working,
Do you remember? Going in early,
Lying in the straw, waiting
For the truck, and then riding
From store to store loading
The shelves. I was stacker,
The job with the most prestige,
And I was the best:
It was only fair, and when
I discovered Chaucer and Montaigne
It was much the same,
But you refused to try.
Reach in, ignore the thorns
And pull, and in one flowing moment
You could have seen it fly,
And I with eye ever clear
Would have caught it and seen it
Fitted in its place
I always said, but in the end
Left you waiting
In the straw.
06-22
10-11-06
The Best Tools
But after that were
The Marines who might be said
To most aggressively confront
The world, and I wished the best
Tools, feeling there was too much
Already out there
To have to recreate.
From five-hundred yards
I could see the bull's eye
And hit it all ten times.
I was ready for anything
After that. The weaknesses
Of Twain, the novel Dreiser
Failed to write,
The Open Boat that carried
Me into other seas
I needed to navigate
Like Slocum voyaging
Around the world
Single-handedly
In his Snark.
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