Breezy Stories
from Shadow Train (1981)
“Not spoiling it for later, yet few are So febrile, so flourishing, and I extract Digits from the Carolinas to fill out those days in Maine, Only now trusting myself, as in the latter period I had not yet learned to do.” And on top of all this one must still learn to judge the quality Of those moments when it becomes necessary to break the rule, To relax standards, bring light and chaos Into the order of the house. A slatternly welcome Suits some as well, no doubt, but the point is There are still others whom we know nothing about And who are growing, it seems, at a rate far in excess Of the legislated norm, for whom the “psychological consequences” Of the forest primeval of our inconsistency, nay, our lives If you prefer, and you quote me, could be “numbing.” Thus, one always reins in, after too much thoughtfulness, the joke Prescription. Games were made to seem like that: the raw fruit, bleeding.