2.16.2009

a poem i like that Landman wrote

My Friends:

It had been years since I had written a poem. A stone's throw from my front porch, a momentous car pulled up along the sidewalk. I asked out loud, "What in the hell is going on here?" I felt the wind coming from across the graveyard. I could hear--let me try this like this--I can hear the traffic from the highway at night. It is a distance away. I can't tell you. No, you cannot hear it, are mistaken. A front porch since my car crash, I sit there every hour. I go out there and cycle back through choices. I asked, of course, of traffic, what sort of belly do you have? It settles. Is it settled? A sidewalk does what in a frost heave? Is this appropriate? To ask a baby? Right here, I peek out the window at the front porch. The house is dastardly and floats on a hill. What a hill. Photographs. There are no answers to front porch traffic. You can't hear the highway at night. The cars come, so I wish to be a car, out loud. Crash, floats the hill. House, say the bees. The graveyard is in hell, you know. Here is going on, like a distance the trees settle on before cars. When I see the redwoods, I settle on a front porch reaction. I can ask lots of the hours. In the belly of giving back, cycle back, sort of photographic. It's a memory of a memory. The shudder of shatter.

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