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The hot day or
the foggy on the tip of cypress
mockingbird a June denizen normalizes all song,
I want a livingroom jig. What dance is
this? cries my criminal amused by
my barrister’s breakdown. A polka,
the accordion relatively recent phenomenon
raucously introduces release from
the academy, idea the principle no longer,
the longer line Whitman’s bow to the
walking pace I amble after him.
I had a Walt as an uncle who lived
in the shed in a trailer nine by twelve,
sleep there my American citizen.
I visited him leaning against the barn
wall while he practiced clean golf shots
in the shade of the shed’s dirt driveway where
my sweat-grimed dad parked the tractor nightly.
What else might be ordinary enough to be in poetry,
clear as fresh water in a wading pool?
Sit in it, don’t just put your feet in,
total immersion baptism in the backyard
under the peppertree where I choose between
the hilarious or rigorous, the poem
of history’s thought wearing a court wig,
or the jester’s higglety-jig, used
to bring poor kings into popular rhyme.
From the book IMPERFECT. Copyright © Grace Grafton
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