Poem for Friday

A Quick One Before I Go
By David Lehman

There comes a time in every man's life
when he thinks: I have never had a single
original thought in my life
including this one & therefore I shall
eliminate all ideas from my poems
which shall consist of cats, rice, rain
baseball cards, fire escapes, hanging plants
red brick houses where I shall give up booze
and organized religion even if it means
despair is a logical possibility that can't
be disproved I shall concentrate on the five
senses and what they half perceive and half
create, the green street signs with white
letters on them the body next to mine
asleep while I think these thoughts
that I want to eliminate like nostalgia
0 was there ever a man who felt as I do
like a pronoun out of step with all the other
floating signifiers no things but in words
an orange T-shirt a lime green awning

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Remember my pretty azaleas?


The bushes in front of my house are now covered not in flowers but in cicadas.


I haven't seen a single photo that really shows how iridescent their wings are.


They have long legs and feel very substantial when you pick them up -- more like holding an amphibian than holding an insect. But they are very clumsy; they are always falling off leaves and landing on their backs, and they can't roll themselves over! We spend a lot of time just flipping cicadas upright so they can move again.


It looks like rain today, and they are very loud; it sounds like someone is shooting phasers at the next town over.

told me about this book, The Book of Old Ships, by Henry B. Culver and Gordon Grant, that I looked up on Amazon.com and half.com and discovered had been reprinted cheaply, but there were a bunch of people selling the original hardcover in decent shape minus the dust jacket for less than the paperback reprint, and the hardcover has some color illustrations on heavy paper...anyway I ordered it, and it came yesterday, along with Patrick O'Brian's Men-Of-War (that one was ordered before it became obvious that we would have to replace the station wagon and I would be broke for the foreseeable future, so this is my last fun splurge other than ROTK next week). Am now in ship geek heaven.

Today I am going to see ! And to buy my older son shorts, since he has outgrown all of his and my younger son has inherited them. My older son has baseball practice tonight so I think only my younger son and I are dining with my parents. And tomorrow my in-laws are coming for the various sports. My mother wants to go see my cousin in a school play on Sunday and I am trying to decide whether I can handle seeing relatives that many days in a row...