LITMIR.BIZ

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strokes his flowing hair.

      Bustle wriggles in her chair.

      Waddle wakes, her head upreared.

      Glide is playing with his beard.

      “We’ll talk some more,” he firmly states.

      Waddle’s nod asseverates.

      Triumphant Bustle says, “Ahem!”

      And Slither names her chair pro tem.

      Slither says, “A job well done.”

      Bustle adds, “I have to run.”

      Waddle mutters her adieux,

      And Glide: “I’ve many things to do.”

      One now Slithers out the door,

      And then out Bustles yet one more.

      The third one Waddles down the hall.

      The last one Glides, and that is all.

Meditation at a Scholarly Conference

      We celebrate our solemn rite.

      We genuflect; we mumble prayer.

      The priestess, personable and bright,

      Legitimates the whole affair.

      A sermon launched, we sip our wine,

      A blessed, welcome sacrament.

      Our ardor, though, will soon decline

      For the blessed testament.

      We endure the sacred mass,

      Holding to the ancient creed,

      Knowing in our hearts at last

      Learned talk is what we need.

      We celebrate the frequent rite,

      Renewing our belief.

      The “Amen” said, our faith is bright,

      And we adjourn with great relief.

      Erotica

Hiking Wheeler

      With candles, groping down through Lehman Cave,

      We chased the shadows of reality

      And saw the cavern as John Lehman had.

      The flicker led him back and back toward

      A treasure. In the greatest Saal he dreamed

      A courtly dance, the fiddles tuning up,

      Their echoes crinoline and riding boots.

      Emerging in the blaring sun, we blinked

      And wiped our eyes; newborn, we tottered stunned,

      Our bleary gaze toward the misted peak.

      An easy climb through pine and aspen glades.

      I watched the muscles flexing in her legs,

      Her working buttocks tight within her shorts,

      And heard her breathing deeply in thin air,

      The quartz shards clinking with her every step.

      When we reached the bristlecones, we paused

      To ponder those tenacious trees, so gnarled,

      But not eternal, no, yet nearly so

      As anything on earth. The cones were bright

      With golden honey, fecund, pregnant, ripe.

      We ate our M&M’s in pinescent air

      And sipped the lukewarm water from canteens.

      Above the timber, scrambling through the scree,

      We reached the cirque, the glistening our goal,

      Then crunched through ice upon the glacier’s face,

      And on the farther side, sat peacefully.

      We’ll take the hike again, again, perhaps,

      But someday we’ll just stay there, glacier-bound,

      Side by side, thinking of the bristlecones,

      The M&M’s, the water, and the scree.

Eudora (on having read One Writer’s Beginnings, by another Eudora)

      In the sixth grade, Eudora Britton

      Had budding bubs.

      She wore rouge and lipstick.

      She looked, I think, like Ava Gardner,

      Hideous,

      So repulsive that we boys stampeded,

      Terrified when the teacher led her

      Toward us across the gym for pairing,

      To practice waltz and foxtrot.

      I remember her full-lipped crimson smile

      Above the sweater and the sagging bobbysox,

      That Wonderland smile, fixed, immobile.

      As she neared us, towed by Miss Hayes,

      We giggled, milling in the corner.

The Deep Structure of Desire

      If I say to you, “The log is ashes,”

      You aren’t puzzled in the least.

      You’ve known logs—known your father to chop them

      For the black, wood-burning stove your mother used to cook the chili sauce in fall

      (Ah, its redolence through the house!)

      and to give the upstairs bedrooms

      just a bit of heat,

      just enough to keep you and Sister Beulah,

      huddling together under the heavy quilts

      your mother made, huddling there, the two of you together, in the bitter Mormon cold of January—

      just enough heat to keep the two of you

      not cold, not warm, but in a middle state

      that made the huddling sweet.

      And yet you should be puzzled.

      For, my love and friend,

      if the log is ashes it is no longer log.

      Something which was the log is now ashes.

      Here is another puzzle for you:

      You, my wife, were born in Fairview.

      But, love, when you were born,

      you were not my wife—

      though no doubt destined by our Mormon God

      through eternity, you for me, me for you,

      one couple indivisible, with no liberty and much justice for both.

      Our language fools us.

      Our moods are trout that sulk beneath

      a log (which is not ashes) and then jump flashing

      at a mayfly or a hackled hook.

      Finish cooking the dinner.

      But if it is not cooked,

      how can it be a dinner?

      The truth is hard to get at.

      Here is a true-untrue story.

      Our oldest son got lost in the mountains.

      (Just Southern California mountains.

      Not Alaska. Not that alarming. He told us

      that

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