Scrabble with Matthews

Jerboa on a triple: I was in for it,

my zither on a double looking feeble

as a "promising" first book. Oedipal & reckless,

my scheme would fail: keep him a couple drinks

ahead, & perhaps the muse would smile

upon me with some ses or some blanks.

January, Vermont: snowflakes teased the windows

of the Burlington airport bar. The waitress

tallied tips & channel-surfed above the amber

stutter of the snowplow's light: it couldn't

keep up, either. Visibility to zero, nothing taking off

& his dulcimer before me (50 bonus points

for "bingos") like a cautionary tale. The night

before I'd been his warm up act,

the audience of expensive preppies

doubling to twenty when he shambled

to the podium to give them Martial

& his then-new poems. "Why do you write

something nobody reads anymore?" queried one

little trust fund in a blazer. "Because

I'm willing to be honestly confused

& honestly fearful." Il miglior fabbro,

a.k.a. Prez: sweet & fitting honorifics he has left

upon the living's lips. Sweet & fitting too

that I could know the poems much better than

the man, flawed as I am told he was. Connoisseur

of word-root & amphibrach, of Coltrane

solo & of California reds, of box score & Horatian loss,

his garrulousness formidable & masking

a shyness I could never penetrate, meeting him

would always find me tongue-tied,

minding my ps & qs, the latter of which

I could not play, failing three times to draw a u.

The dead care nothing for our eulogies:

he wrote this many times & well.

& yet I pray his rumpled daimonion

shall guide our letters forward

as they wend the snow-white notebook leaves,

the stanzas scrolling down the laptop screens.

Game after game & the snow labored on.

Phalanx, bourboned whiteout & the board aglow

as he'd best me again & again. Qintar

& prosody, the runway lights enshrouded

& the wind, endquote, shook the panes.

Source: Poetry (October 2002)