Classic Poem

It might have been pitching that over-stuffed chair,
the one we were given, called Charley Fell,
into a hole in the ground.

I took it out to the edge of town
and tried to talk the attendant, Joe,
into leaving it next to the hole.

Someone might want it, someone stuck
with a board for a bed or a case of ague
or unreliable hair.

But Joe said no, just pitch it in.
So a perfectly comfortable gift of a chair
went down in that hole on its side.

It lay there, flowers all over its hide,
with the rest of the county's trash beside.
I nearly cried.

Had I known how to put the world in reverse
that day, I'd have gone down into that hole
and dragged it back to the air.

I'd have taken it somewhere, anywhere,
side of the road, the taxi stand,
where on a slow evening

the drivers compare their fares and their tips,
introducing, now and then, quips
of a sort I could mention, but won't.

Though I can't get that gaping hole in the ground
away from my mind, the getting and giving,
the cabbage and rind,

nor the laughter I used to hear from the porch
in the summer when they thought I was sleeping
upstairs, that hole in the darkness.

I got up this morning and went to the window,
and there were the comfortable, over-stuffed,
lumpy mountains again,

trees all over them, fishers and bears,
yodeling grandmothers, skimmers and pears.
Well, maybe not pears.

You may think I'm crazy, you may think I'm blind,
but something came up from a hole in my mind
called Charley Fell.

I've heard you can go to the moon in a shoe.
And, tell me, if you got an offer like that,
wouldn't you?











From Poetry Magazine, July 2006. Used with permission.