Circle Poems
By Lew Welch
Whenever I have a day off, I write a new poem.
Does this mean you shouldn’t work, or that you
write best on your day off?
For example, this is the poem I wrote today.
*
When he was 20, he understood some of the secrets of
life, and undertook to write them down so simply that
even an idiot could understand.
“For,” he reasoned, “if I can’t do that, I don’t
understand it myself.”
He proved himself right.
When he was 50, he didn’t understand it himself.
*
“Why is it,” he said, “that no matter what you say,
a woman always takes it personally?”
“I never do,” she said.
*
John said, “Then I met that short fat guy with the
neat little beard, with a name like dawn.”
“You mean George Abend?”
“Yeah.”
“Abend means evening.”
*
Copyright Credit: Lew Welch, “Circle Poems” from Ring of Bone: Collected Poems of Lew Welch. Copyright © 2012 by Lew Welch. Reprinted by permission of City Lights Books.
Source: Ring of Bone: Collected Poems of Lew Welch (City Lights Books, 2012)