October 26, 2010
After Butt-Picking
Amanda Mae, if you will allow my take:
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Butts I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with butt-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of butts: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified butts appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of butts coming in.
For I have had too much
Of butt-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-butt heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
– For Cindy.
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For I have had too much
Of butt-picking: I am overtired
Oh, Rick, thank you.
Here’s one for you:
My butt aches
And a drowsy numbness pains my sense
As though of hemlock I have drunk
Or emptied some dull opiate to the dregs.
(I did that from memory, believe it or not, so it might not be exactly right. But the muse was with me, so I had to type fast.)
God, help me. I am especially enamored of And every fleck of russet showing clear in the defiling of these words.
oh god it’s so good.
Where’s Renner? This is right up his alley.
And I apologize, Amanda Mae, for applying your brilliant idea to Keats. I find that butts go well with almost anyone’s poetry.
Good butts make good neighbors.
Fish and butts stink after three days.
We will have to look for more good butt poems.
Cindy, let’s type when the fire is upon us always.