Poet Lament To Scott Wannberg

Scott Wannberg, poet Lament 

copyright © Caroline Gerardo August 22, 2011

Scott Wannberg said

You told me,

“Our measure is when we are dead.”

“The amount of gold inside my teeth?”

A memory so pushcloudy:

“Tonight’s reading, my house

next to Marilyn Monroe’s

last pill on Sixth Helena Drive.”

At the Bosendorfer piano

Charlie Haden misses his twins.

English Sheepdog, Byron 

guards the Dutch Door.

“You are too beautiful to be a poet or a painter.”

In rage. I count Plath, Sexton-

today I tell you Lisa Zaran & Daisy Fried.

Wake up take a challenge,

though we have not spoken for centuries,

your shy intellect is in our hearts.

I am a cocoon of solitude,

cone of silence with prolific words,

never in the nick of time.

A passion vine overtakes my magnolia,

I planted it to feed the monarchs.

God knows I take care of my children but

to recall to feed the birds is a millet story.

Come scatter black seeds,

I have children to outlive me,

a geriatric pregnancy cancer miracle.

Pray I find the poems you wrote in my journals

I carried around like a Bible.

They are not lost in the fire,

or in the devastation choices for cheating men.

I am now Hephaestus, beauty is my creation

I am a living poet with work ahead.