I found the following lines in a book I got at a yard sale for $.50. The book is not poetry, but the author is a poet as well as novelist. I knew that from these lines, then confirmed by reading the author's biography. I'm not sure I'll like the book, but the writing shimmers like moonlight on a lake. (Don't upchuck on that last!)
"...I stir in bed and the memories rise out of me like a buzz of flies from a carcass."
"Some of us know how we came by our fortune, and some of us don't, but we wear it all the same. There's only one question worth asking now: How do we aim to live with it?"
I'm betting you know both the book and the author. Am I right?
The following lines, though not as poetic, struck a personal note:
"Then, in the 1920s, when elsewhere in the world the menfolk took a break between wars to perfect the airplane and the automobile, a white man finally did set eyes on the okapi... ... A family of them now reside in the New York Museum of Natural History, dead and stuffed, with standoffish glass eyes. "
I wonder if you have been to that museum, Poet. I haven't been, but there's an exhibit there (or was) depicting the wildlife of Crater Lake National Park. You could report whether the two marten, male and female, are still there, dead and stuffed, with standoffish glass eyes.
I knew them with bright angry eyes, and a heartbeat.
Don't hate me. |
