When you're older it's knots, hard knots
Explosive and angry . . .
Young, it's just solid, open flame.
Like Dylan went to Guthrie's bedside
I once started for Patchen's bad back
in California, but dawdled east
of the Rockies while he died.
Michelle,
did either of us gain anything
we would not have gained anyway
or does it all boil down to politics?
to idealism that fructifies in unjust ways,
copable only as we come to it?
That -- what we did -- is no knot.
no regret. Just no notion of whether
I would hold anger now at things
which I may not have met
having made another way.
I climbed into the attic yesterday
to find a leak, found an empty
Spam tin . . .
"Who the hell . . .?"
I sat and thought of Denver,
frying Spam for breakfast
and you . . . until the rain stopped,
the leak unfound,
waiting rampant
for ignition.