A wet, or a moist sound outside the window,
the same found by a walk by the forest,
like rain, the rhythm of crickets
sawing away in blades of grass
shot through by a bolt from a higher bug,
up  in trees, like an overseeing wind,
and the echo of the fall of rain continues
in the blank quiet of night,
now not as heartily as before
in the height of August.
They are thinking of something,
or constructing, and care little
to expand their empire
while all's in balance.
Nighttime is theirs.
I've played guitar at night out in the garden
and their symphonic layers,
the arrangement of their orchestra
coincided with my small attempt at music,
or was that the birds in early spring accommodating a tune
as the light approached on a first warm day.
The idiot, alone,
merges with nature, appreciates it
as a Saturday night ticks to Sunday morn.
I'll sleep as people go off to church,
wake, and go to work as
folk relax and think of Sunday dinner.

"You always look so sad," she said to me,
once, as we sat at the War Memorial,
our dungaree jackets not quite warm enough
for just past Easter,
and I shrugged, I don't know,
dooming myself to years
wearing not the jacket of the three piece
suit of my father's for the interview
but the jacket of a workman,
a toiler, not a scholar,
distracted by some
piece of work,
dragging on.

But it comes, I should have said,
maybe I did, that it comes
with the poet's territory,
and who cares about his ability
as long as he has that gift,
of being sad, or pensive, or
thoughtful, identifying.
That's the first thing,
the thing he must accomplish.
For then he'll understand the world.
and all its people.
The words will come later,
if he has his time.
I didn't know
I'd get blamed for it
(and handed
shit.)
I was
too gentle,
I suppose,
confident with poems.

So I get sad, or thankful,
to have a wake,
when a poet dies, when they put him up,
when they show his lectures
and quote his lines.
And you see how good
this poet was,
or how life is hard, so hard
to can't go on, without
poetry.  He was a scholar,
but he had in mind
an unschooled uncle
who spoke with dignity.
Who would acknowledge you
as a poet, but another one?
gentlemanly and generous;
who would cut you out of your
febrile virile dust,
make you into a man.
He spoke with life,
and now he's gone,
the life having gone from him,
no more lines,
not about peaty bogs
and a grandfather's spade.