THE UNKNOWN LYRIST’S EASTER SUNDAY SERMON TO HIMSELF
by Klipschutz

National Poetry Month or no,
I am, per usual, alone,
in that dreary little cul-de-sac
removed from luck and light,
BOOKS ON TAPE and MYSTERY,
green to yellow COOKING,
the bitter dream of TRAVEL,
surrounded by the pure pith of the ages,
the rotten, ripe and wax fruit of the age.
My eyes fall on an argument,
The Ordeal of Robert Frost,
no doubt misshelved, well-reasoned prose,
which I don’t disturb,
having ordeals of my own.

Outside a weak sun shines
as my Rockports carry me
back to this Tendernob cavern.
(What used to be a “garret, carpet new”
now lists as “atmospheric, skyline view.”)

Okay, he had it hard, we know, we know.
The hired hand comes home to die,
that much I recall, God-fearing solid souls
take him in. Apples, birches, fences,
the virtues of persistence and blank verse.
Still no matter how you slice it,
the ordeal of Robert Frost has gone to sleep.
I on the other hand rock on
from crisis to conceit,
elegy to chorus, cheek to cheek,
beset by editors and landlords without faces.

An early April afternoon could’ve gone worse.
One’s bookworm cul-de-sac is the apple of another’s universe.

Klipschutz (pen name of Kurt Lipschutz) is a poet, songwriter and occasional freelance journalist. This poem is from his new book from Anvil Press.