I passed old Bobby Burns a'comin' through the rye,
And a wee sleekit mouse outside Tam O'Shanter's door.
I sauntered on inside and brushed off a blue tailed fly;
Side-stepping spilled Bells whiskey on the sawdust floor....
I followed the golden river Alph down to a sunlit sea,
Where many an ancient mariner had heard the ocean roar.
An albatross flew high and seemed to be eyeing me.
The ship was laden with skeletons both aft and fore....
The stormy petrel follows me every step of the way,
Chirping, chattering Keats, or a Shelly ode or two,
Such as maybe to a Grecian urn or skylark at play,
As I wandered lonely as a cloud in sky of powdered blue...
Take from me my present, I am still who you see
Take from me my past and I am no longer me.....
Doris Day once told me whatever will be will be
But all I ever talk about now is ancient history....
Around goes the poetry-go-round, the one that never stops.
I can quote Milton's 'sonnet on his blindness' all day long.
I can no longer sort out rhymes, the bottom ones from the tops,
And I can't carry a single tune, I suppose I'm not that strong....
I am lost inside a forest full of all kinds of poetry
It is hard to make a sentence unless I do it in rhyme
I somehow became a member of the poetic coterie
Now I think of nothing else but poems all the time.....
Take from me my present, nothing changes inside of me
Take from me my past, I have no idea who I would be
James Joyce once told me nothing was as lovely as a tree
And all I ever speak of now are the things I feel or see....
July 2009
