Two Poems
Vintage
prom dress
circa 1956soft Nile green
embroidery
on full netted skirtpomp, ceremony,
then three years in a closet
called back into service
college dancelast minute
broken zipper
sewn closed tight
better
than a chastity beltwadded into bags,
shoved into drawers
too good to throw away
fifty more yearscalled back into service
community theatre
cleaned, new zipper
new glory
circa 2009
Improvisations On A Sentence By Frost
after Jack Spicer
"Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it…"
I'm sure winter also damages the
Great Wall of China and Hadrian's
Wall, too. Certainly the Wailing Wall
and the Vietnam Wall need repairs and
what about Wall Street? Prison walls
await many of its denizens.
Mystery writers mention that the
walls are thin, have ears, or that
it would be nice to be a fly on the wall.
There are wall-eyed pike, wall flowers,
wall papers, wall safes, ivy covered walls.
People wall up their emotions, build
walls around themselves, Nancy Drew
found The Clue in the Crumbling Wall.
You won't be able to save them all,
Robert, but I'm glad you take care
of your own.
—Judith Sepsey, New Berlin, WI