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Life with its sorrow, life with its tear.
And you know what that means:
the sky in a drawer,
the underwear underworld
on the floor of the moon.
Under the emergency lamps a small panic was growing,
keeping to itself, chiming
ahead of your headlights, wobbly.
You had just gotten so young
it was all I could do to contain you
in the linen dishtowel we kept for that purpose.
The doctor prescribed bed rest.
The cash cow is a going concern,
the intake not dangerous enough
that you folks enjoy.
It’s not immortality,
these mechanical trees, alders.
Good to know you’re not killing them all yourself
across the street baby.
John Ashbery won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. His most recent book is Breezeway.
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