Saturday commute clxii: 7 when right-handed

     We don't have to crop a Vivian Maier

     photograph, to pare it to essentials.

     We just have to look at it. How fam-

     iliar she finds the subject's own an-

     nouncement, I am 7 when right-handed,

     8 when I'm left. For all the many in-

     formative features of a Vivian Maier

     photograph, there's no cluttering its

     unforgettability. We take in every-

     thing we see, as utter verification. 

Vivian Maier

Rolleiflex photograph

  full field

1956

Suppose it were Friday clxvii: And the lights came up

   and we were here to see

   the end of unanswerable

   government in this land

Carolyn Haster, AP, photograph

United States House of Representatives

Washington, DC

The Washington Post

January, 2019©

Weaving spiders, mind the Steppes

      How tiresomely, it never fails.

      The moment we launch an entry

      tending to challenge the regime

      in power, our "readership" from

      Russia suddenly matches or ex-

      ceeds the native marketplace.

      You'd think our new Speaker

      were of investigative interest.

      It's enough to call to mind the

      plea of Bohemia, Weaving spiders,

      come not here, to be updated only

      as Naughty bots, buzz off. It's

      enough to make one think the Re-

      publican Party's own security

      apparatus can't manage a simple

      opinion sample of their own -

      not, I admit, that they're much

      in favor of any science. Well,

      let's hope we're paying for it

      in bawdy nights at Mar-a-Lago,

      and not the Secret Service fund

      for the despot's exile there. 

Where have you been?

    Been waitin', 
    Ma'am.



















Stephen Crowley, photograph
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC
The New York Times
January, 2007©

Why quarrel with this lake?

     I looked along the bar
     And saw my fellow creature
     Bravely standing there.
     "By word, sign, or touch,"
     I cried, in my mute heart,
     "Tell me, be my teacher,
     Be learnèd in that art,
     What is my name and nature?"
















David Ferry
Bewilderment
  New Poems and
  Translations
  At a Bar
    [fragment]
University of Chicago, 2012©