Lunch
Grilled cheese sandwich Slice of pickle
Bread pudding and coffee
At the hospital with a Poor Clare teaching poet nun
from the psychiatric ward
Spoke of saints and other poets
How they lived and why
And how compelling their intensity
Noted that each was like a poem
(and a complicated poem, I interjected)
She turned her head and gazed at me
But why should they be complicated poems?
Because no poem or person
can be a simple thing for very long (I answered)
And she said
You are wrong About poems And people
(she had forgotten I was a psychiatrist)
Perhaps you may some day become intense
Remain that way for longer than it takes
to sketch a lyric poem
Remain Remain intense without relief
What a poet you might then become
And they would put you in a room with padded walls
Right next to mine
—Jerry Hauser
