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"To see the world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower;
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour."
William Blake
Poems by Bart Becker
Market
Old people smile and hug
beside vegetables.
Young people kiss
beside packets of seeds.
Differences
Acting on unavailable information
I think of cities
or perhaps it is the farm-thoughts
which prefer to be alone
and have gone off alone
thinking there is no more
Heaven and Hell than there is snow.
My fingers want to bump my pencil
like warm rivers
brushing old islands;
still this pencil
moves to be held as carefully
as blank pieces of paper
or pieces of sharp sculpture.
Mornings
Smells
of shortcakes
and long legs
mingle through my mornings
sticking to the rooms
like wallpaper.
Then,
quietly as smoke,
you rouse me.
The Old Days
Mom remembers when
they backed the car up the low hills of Nebraska
like mechanical squids
propelling themselves through blacktop oceans.
She remembers when the sparrows
used to hang like feather underwear
on the clothesline
and scrape songs from their throats
like blistered paint
until she chased them off to the woods.
Dad remembers how
chickens were raised loose in the dirt
fighting for crumbs like begging generals.
He remembers pleated skirts
like rows of accordion girls in the school
when he was young and on the school board.
Things seemed more interesting then.
But not much.
Futures
1. I thought about life with a fat woman
and the way the floor would creak
when she moved around the bedroom
preparing herself for ponderous lovemaking
as I read, sitting in an easy chair.
I thought of moving to sit in her chair
rubbing my ass across sunken cushions
and getting up to wash my face
and wipe it with her towel.
I thought of looking at her reflection
while I was shaving in the morning
and she was straddling the toilet
Bella-Through Snowdrifts
Bella is a saviour
with rainy mouth.
She comes blundering
through leaking doorways
slightly sliding.
Out in snowdrifts,
licking freeze from tangled jowls,
she comes like a trained rainstorm;'
providing life.
And Bella has whiskey.
THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1972
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