William Matthews Long Poems
- 1. A Happy Childhood
My mother stands at the screen door, laughing.
â??Out out damn Spot,â? she commands our silly dog.
I wonder what this means. I rise into adult air
... - 2. Bedtime
Usually I stay up late, my time
alone. Tonight at 9o I can tell
I'm only awake long enough
to put my sons to bed.
... - 3. On The Porch At The Frost Place, Franconia, N. H.
So here the great man stood,
fermenting malice and poems
we have to be nearly as fierce
against ourselves as he
... - 4. Mingus At The Showplace
I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeen
and so I swung into action and wrote a poem
and it was miserable, for that was how I thought
... - 5. Dire Cure
"First, do no harm," the Hippocratic
Oath begins, but before she might enjoy
such balm, the docs had to harm her tumor.
It was large, rare, and so anomalous
...
