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Hypothermia
The three victims were immigrants
who died of hypothermia, that was what
the news said after a huge unexpected snowstorm
blew through east Texas. I'm wondering
if that adequately sums up three lives lost
so tragically, so needlessly, wondering
about those people: what they thought and did
and hoped and dreamed, where they came from,
who they knew, what their families
and friends were doing now with them dead,
and whether they liked apples and peanut butter,
dancing and the color yellow.
Trip out to Tanglewood
Such a nice sounding name, Tanglewood, a place
where great music is played,
clear across the state, three hours away.
Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms.
In the back seat of our friend's car, talking
about town sewers and modular classrooms,
town meetings and selectmen meetings,
easements, pocketbook issues, tax overrides,
zoning boards, immanent domain, school boards,
library expansion, the 5-year plan,
and the new Norman Lake Memorial Bridge. Jesus.
"Do you know that some people
are completely uninterested and uninformed
about town politics? It's terrible
to not know what's going on in your own community."
I glance up, look at my face
in the rearview mirror, see
my thinning hair and fleshy earlobes,
my large bulbous nose and the widening space
between my teeth. I sigh, "I agree,"
and continue working on writing another useful
poem, watching the scenery, the green trees
and bright blue sky passing by.
A Common Man Visits Holy Trinity Church
in Stratford-Upon-Avon
I stood reverently before the altar,
as if before God,
as if just before getting married,
as if during a funeral mass,
barely breathing,
where Shakespeare is buried
beneath a non-descript
chunk of dull gray slate,
thought of Hamlet and King Lear,
and cried.
Michael Estabrook writes, "I'm a Marketing Communications Manager for a tiny division of a gigantic billions-of-dollars company, and man, going into an office every day can be excruciating. The stuffy air, the florescent lights are killing me. Thankfully I can retire in 10 or 15 years. But I still think that somehow I've got to get myself on some boat collecting phytoplankton, or into the rich brown hills of Montana searching for TRex bones. Then again maybe I simply should've stayed on Northfield Avenue where I belong and learned to fix cars like my Daddy did." (July 2005).
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