Walt, As I See Him
6-foot-7 & 73 years old
Moved from Rhode Island to
New York City at 19.
Sang in mafia bars,
sung on broadway,
worked as a bouncer.
Then I imagine he
bummed around, walked Paul Simon’s
streets of cobblestone
for twenty-odd years.
At 50, he found himself
in the words of Philip Levine.
Learned poetry in an LA furnace
that made grown actors sweat,
crack and cry.
Utah is where he hangs his hat now,
a black ball cap
that sits on the table in front of me.
He sets down a fresh notebook,
hands me a pen,
lectures me on Ezra Pound,
tells me the rules of poetry
and asks me to ignore them.
“Write me a line of poetry” he says,
so I write a couplet which does not satisfy.
“I guess you’re clever” he says flatly.
No time to be delicate.
“If it doesn’t rhyme, what makes it poetry?”
I do not know, because I haven’t read
much of that, and never written it
but I muster “I suppose it’s a broth
made from the bones of prose.”
I was proud of that.
“Maybe you’re right, hell if I know.”
He challenges me to write
one good, clean sentence,
and if it means anything,
it’s probably poetry.