The winter clouds are awash
in the black and silver
of a photographic plate.
I chose voluntary poverty.
Old cars. Oatmeal.
Counting before buying.
A twelve-dollar wreath
is gaudy and conventional,
but it’s for the Boy Scouts.
Krakauer’s wilderness
is a life away, where
the mountains speak
in cloud and storm.
Days snowbound,
sky and tea water.
All my poetry is true—
how could it not be?—
except in the first person.
A man who lives nearby
hung a deer by the pasterns
from a basketball hoop.
Proud father, his daughter
stepped from the school bus,
sobbing upon first sight.
I bring the wreath inside.
The kids know where it goes,
hung to the door in twilight.
This film is in black and white.
Celluloid, where the proud
and the wounded play.
This article appears in December 2011.
