Particles: New and Selected Poems. Dan Gerber

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Particles: New and Selected Poems - Dan Gerber

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      The old woman

      walks past the battered wall

      A shadow follows her

      twisted and huge

      It is her shadow

      She doesn’t want to see it

      She keeps her eyes on the ground

      humming some tuneless tune

      Thirty-nine geese

      and the shadows of thirty-nine geese

      from DEPARTURE

      1973

      The Cache

      Behind the house in a field

      there’s a metal box I buried

      full of childhood treasure a map

      of my secret place a few lead pennies

      from 1943

      The rest I’ve forgotten

      forgotten even the exact spot

      I covered with moss and loam

      Now I’m back and twenty years

      have made so little difference

      I suspect they never happened

      this face in the mirror

      aged with pencil and putty

      I suspect even

      the box has moved as a mole would move

      to a new place long ago

      Notes from the Underground

      I enter the book

      amazed to discover

      the destruction of happiness

      At times I think I’m a reasonable man

      though I have no use for reason

      Faces intrude saying, I’m to be considered

       Stay at home Don’t take a chance

       It rains when you least expect it

       No one relies on tomorrow

      a proverb the interpretation

      the words of the wise their dark sayings

      like giving everything you own away

      relieved to discover

      it was never yours

      from THE CHINESE POEMS

      1978

       Dripping from the eaves everything melting

       clearheaded this morning in the mist

       drifting like life from the ice

       The order and disorder of that order

       “Nothing is so important”

       The way we read that

       defines our vision

       We had better leave it

       “Nothing is”

      from Letters to a Distant Friend

      1

      Nothing seems to get any better

      I have given up waiting for more

      Once we had youth on our side

      full of promise

      Now we are what we are

      and struggle with one aging mind

      to climb the wall

      we no longer believe is there

      2

      For months we live a day’s trip apart

      absorbed in writing flowers for the void

      What are they to us

      but orphaned children

      What are these days that won’t come again

      but moments we labor

      to preserve our loneliness

      5

      Another winter morning

      I’m expecting your call

      I stand close to the window and watch

      my breath form a rose on the glass

      I scratch your name on it

      then wipe it away with my sleeve

      listening for your tires

      to crunch through the ice on the drive

      I notice how snow glistens on the pine boughs

      that there’s no wind at all

      It’s too cold for my walk

      Nothing dares disturb this stillness

      I know you aren’t coming

      I press my cheek to the window

      The telephone rings

      My breath forms a rose on the glass

      9

      Happiness is only one condition

      Fools

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