Sometimes a poem will have his first wife
and the steps to her underground cellar,
or perhaps his second wife’s slow cook
of root crops and roasting ears.  Sometimes
a poem will need his grandchildren and step-
grandchildren to move away from home,
or will hold on to steeples, fields and bedrooms
and the sweet lilacs that altar-girls
carry with beeswax candles on the eve of feasts.
Sometimes a poem will deign to present us
with bowls of beans and rice at a dinner
serenaded by the flat pickings of Doc Watson.
Sometimes he will teach us to eat after dark
and enjoy the autumn hush in the tart bite
of Gold Rush apples that Jennifer’s  picked
from the third row of Reid Valley Orchard.                         

                           (after Robert Bly’s Turkish Pears)