Winter Fragments

You start a would-be
      become a should be
but you never could-be

      because you don't
know what to be means

..................................................

Stopped for a funeral, stopped
      stopping, waited for it to stop,
it was my funeral & I left, dead

...................................................

Never known me,
     but I can guess the
  number of times I've
turned blackly around
     on a crowded street,
   wind-whipped, and
seen myself in a store-
     front window & then
  known more than I
did before about

what might be worth buying.

....................................................

I am is
back to
basics,

a tent
put up,
taken

down,
heaved
into a

back
seat, as
if used,

never
having
been

slept in.

.........................................

I was raking leaves,
I found a volume of
Shakespeare, I raked
it, I found a volume
of Milton, ditto, &
just kept raking until
I hit Jonathan Swift,
who took my rake,
raked me over coals
too hot to be blackened,
told me to go back to
Chaucer, what a rake-
nothing was finished,
nothing was raked.

...........................................