Hello, Bob, Alex, Tim, David, et al,
As some of you know well, I have been a devotee of Dick Barnes' poetry since Bob persuaded him to send me two formal pieces and a jewel in FV to help us launch the Susquehanna Quarterly back in '99. One of the three was this:
Age and Vigilance
George Morgan decided Cocoa was vicious,
our fat eager labrador that wouldn't have meant any trouble,
but he hollered and shook his stick, was afraid and
suspicious
until one day she took the hint, went over and bit his
poodle.
O didn't he holler then, and when Pat went over
hollered at her,
called the cops, and the vet, and the pound, everyone
he could think of
until I got a bit steamed myself and called him a
motherfucker,
wishing him nearer my age, I'd go knock his block off --
a goodnatured, neighborly, peaceloving man like me.
And water wells up in the ground, it burst through his
front yard,
strange cars sometimes park unexplained on the street,
a family of Jews has moved into the neighborhood,
another neighbor picks dead leaves off his ivy at night.
Something ails George's wife, the doctors can't tell him
what.
(My copy of A Word Like Fire is on display at the Stadler Poetry Center, Bucknell University. Have ordered another copy for my own shelf. Dick Barnes is one of approximately two writers of free verse whose FV I read with admiration and pleasure.)
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[This message has been edited by Golias (edited April 24, 2006).]
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