----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 10:59 AM
Subject: Re: 2 poems
> Dark, very, the revision just a little more that way with the nature
> addition.
>
> 'Omelet' a 30s in the oughts vision?
>
> Doug
Good take, Doug -- But I think "Omelet" is *now in the oughts vision. Or
rather *always -- the way things are.. I've always hated the famous phrase
with which Joseph Schumpeter characterized and (he thought) justified
capitalism: "creative destruction." You can't make an omelet without
breaking eggs. That's what they tell the eggs, as someone said. The sad
figures in my poems, who cast themselves aside, are the eggs. --- It's one
of those poems I can't get right --- here's the version w/ wh/ I think I'll
give up:
Omelet
We have another one,
since last week, in our neighborhood.
Three houses down. He sits
the way most of them do, by his garbage cans
and recycling bin;
sometimes by the side of his house
where the sprinkler hose is coiled for fall.
Old warm clothes, a blanket - even
a watch-cap, which looks strange
on his office-worker's face.
You can tell it's getting to him.
I saw him steal a drink from the hose
and look speculatively
at squirrels and another neighbor's dog.
Now he's weakened and gray. Rain is forecast;
the leaves come down on him and the yard
he doesn't stray into.
The wife sold the second car (his);
comes home from work and doesn't go out
and never meets his eye.
It must be hard, but they're disciplined.
I give it another week.
Then someone - she, most likely - will make the call.
He did the right thing. It's terrible when
it's the wife, or a woman living alone.
They dress up, if you can imagine that -
jewels, if they have any left -
or just a housedress and a robe.
They seldom last a week.
And some are . vocal, a strain
on everyone. When it's kids,
it doesn't bear thinking about.
It's different, I've heard, in other
neighborhoods. They form gangs.
Run around like chickens without heads.
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