Someone Asked me How I Start a Poem
Someone asked me how I start a poem
And I said it had to do with scent,
I remember, summer 1957,
being underwater and chlorine and the vivid
look of other swimming beings.
Play “Tea Party”
“Why?”
I never understood “Tea Party”
or the scent of afternoon grass
in Connecticut
in June.
Lying there, listening to
airplanes floating, hawks looking
for sex, prey,
safety.
We lay there
among the blades, clipped,
eyes gliding across summer blue
skies reading cloud clusters like
braille translating childhood.
No language for bewilderment.
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