POEM

Some days are like

bringing rabbits out of a hat.

Some days one must

hide one’s light

in a barrel. Some days

one’s heart doesn’t want

to to stay where it belongs—

it keeps going

flippity-flop flippity-flop.

Some days there are

unexpected pleasures

that leave you in a kind of

impressive pause

that lasts long enough

so that any random sound

will make you jump as if

gazing upon the nucleus

of the neurotic.

Yes, unexpected...

like over-hearing

someone say, “art gives me

the willies” or like tonight,

while flipping, or flopping,

through the Complete Poems
1913-1962 of E.E. Cummings

that I had recently obtained

from an antique store,

I discovered a pressed

marijuana leaf on page 776,

covering a poem titled SONG

where lines from the poem

such as “precisely ours /

is the now to grow” & “our summer

in fall / and in winter our spring /

is the yes of yes” befits my

inflamed discovery just as

“strolling slowly(mind in mind) /

through some green

mysterious land” caressed

the underside of the leaf

on the very opposite page.

& then I grew anxious for

more discoveries

so I flipped through the

thick book where I was

thinking that perhaps

I’d find money? a tiny birdie

with golden wings? & suddenly

on page 383

I made another discovery:

a four-leaf clover

that had perhaps been aching

to be seen again after thirty years

like a corpse that longs to be seen

in a wax museum.