Nightwandering at 83
- Nightwandering at 83
… after reading poems until my eyes burn red with explosive flashes that do not bode well each night in bed i lose control a psychopathnot counting sheep but headlines thinking of war beauty and you right here and whether all beauty is poetry and all poetry math and seeing lines of poems slide by on feet both visible and auricular
like nursery rhymes with little lambs and boatsgently down the stream increasingly dyslexic last night i thought jack and the stalkbean which i actually prefer: see the stalkbeanstep along the path where mowdy rockingbirds take their borning maths …
when you’re a hundred and i am one o three will we still be we or just still beor will we just be still … ?
when i was young in brooklyn i yearned to be tall and straightwith an eye that could count the stitches on a fast ball over the plate
and later but not now with the teams down herefor spring training one of my students stared out the window at the field flat as a lake so i yelled pay attention charlie
and he said jeez perfesser yesterdayi got a hit off seaver … but i’m still awake
while the dragon wars drag on like a low-grade fever [End Page 53]
Peter Meinke (Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg, 2009-15) is now Poet Laureate of Florida. He’s had over twenty books published, including eight in the Pitt Poetry Series, most recently Lucky Bones (2014). The University of Tampa has published six of his books, including a guide to writing poems, The Shape of Poetry (2012); a collection of his Poet’s Notebook essays, Truth & Affection (2013); a children’s book, The Elf Poem (2015), and a collection of short stories, The Expert Witness (2016)—all illustrated by his wife, the artist Jeanne Meinke.
