Sub Rosa (after Infinite Diagonals)

 

I practice quadratic equations

where 4x² + 2x + 1 = n

 

sensible, linear, chronological

efficacious, yet at the end

 

the realization, after forty years

that I’m only rehearsing

[RK 11/14/2020]

 

The Regret Teeter-Totter (after Interior Design)

I recall every one of  the tens

of thousands of books I’ve possessed

not ‘owned,’ for after they leave

their lives continue

 

John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Wyatt

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christopher Marlow

George Herbert, William Blake, all those

amazing Englishmen who became friends

 

for a while, then the purge, for hoarding books

is still hoarding, then, looms disassembled

copper etching plates sold for scrap money

thousands of prints thrown in the trash

 

do I miss you? of course. I even miss the

rocking chair where I held my infant son

and read aloud about two birds called

“Pelly and Peak”

[RK 11/14/2020]