Happy Birthday Darryl!!! 


                              Lost Poems

I've lost so many of my poems for you--
The ones about dancing in the kitchen
         must be somewhere in a tangle of receipts
                   or under the ironing
                          or between the sofa cushions
                                  at the dentist's.
And I'm sure the one I started on that
         late night when you were far away,
         the one about the last leaves left twitching
                  on the oak,
Is stuck to something sticky in the back of the pantry.
And the few good lines about raw love--
         ones about the naked want
                  in the dragonfly's throbbing blue line--
Sadly were crushed beneath my tires
         as I raced to carpool.
And after some bitter argument,
         the words about the still glinting eye
                  of a broken bird
Evaporated with the steam when I drained the pasta.

All those ardent words for you
         love music clever and deep
         like vivid orange petals gone to mulch
That grew instead of poems
         fresh laundry and good children
                  and the smell of your dinner cooking
                                as you came up the drive.



okay--perhaps the lines about dinner cooking
and fresh laundry are stretching things a bit.
Happy Birthday my love.