I’ve decided that the greatest poem ever written is William Carlos Williams “The Red Wheelbarrow.”

That may be a bold assertion, but I stand behind it.  For you see, I have decided.

I’ve decided other things in the last few years as well.  I reached the conclusion that “Crimson and Clover” by Tommy James and The Shondells is the greatest pop song ever recorded.  After a thorough investigation into every choice offered, past and present, I decided that burnt sienna is the most wonderful of all Crayola brand crayons.  I know now, definitively, that Autumn is the best season, for it is clearly superior to Fall.

I’ve also reconciled the difference between recognizing that something is the greatest, and knowing that something else is my favorite.  Despite all my love and admiration for “The Red Wheelbarrow,” despite it’s stark beauty and keen simplicity, I know that e.e. cummings’ “somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond” is my favorite poem.

I enjoyed reading some of your work today, especially your piece “On Thinking.”  I hope you are well, and your family also.

It’s somehow reassuring to know that you are still at _____.

Yours, etc.

I cannot remember why I made you cry, your front door
or the smell of your hair
I’ve misplaced anger, Rhode Island, a book by Auden.

third grade is gone.

these nights ache from more than just November’s chill,
Thanksgiving 3am, a room of absence, overflowing ashtray,
gas station-flavored coffee.

just waiting for a thing to come
something beautiful to haunt this awful place.

the ghosts have left the building,
and putting furniture together is easy.

or maybe salmon.  Hung with pushpins or thumbtacks

on a community bulletin board next to fliers for babysitters

or lost dogs or baseball card shows at the Kiwanis Club  in some

laundromat with a kitschy name like “Suds N Such.”

Perhaps left folded origami-style on a table in the dimly lit back

corner of a coffee shop, the kind of place that has an open mic

night and still plays Otis Redding’s “Cigarettes and Coffee” even though

smoking’s been banned in this state for years.

Or left under wiper blades in the parking lot of Wal*Mart.

Or stapled to telephone poles along with advertisements for bands

with names like District Attorney or Local Tomatoes.

Instead, they are here, or will be at any rate.  The poems that I’ve written

and those that I have yet to write,

the poems that I’ll never take credit for, will rest here.

Welcome to my blog.

Then you walked in, a vision of tangled
sweaters and scarves,
Red hair tucked neatly under wool knit cap
with earflaps,
I was huddled over my notebook
trying to steady caffeine-addled hands
Busy making amends for a year’s worth of sins.

Your glow filled the room and warmed my heart
as you bounced around the countertop
So full of life and promise
and I stared, I’m embarrassed to say,
I stared as I stirred my coffee into oblivion.

I remember writing something like,
“I walked toward her and spoke her name,
like Kerouac in The Bar That Never Closes,”
So like me to invoke heaven in a town cold as hell.

Just wanted you to know that
I thought of you tonite,
Four years and four hundred miles away,
and that I’d trade the warmth of my apartment
To know your wool knit cap with earflaps