What Poem

    What poem
    were you thinking of,
    my dear,
    as you breezed out the door
    in your long coat fur-tipped
    at the top?
    What animal
    once wore that fur
    and licked it
    with a long, raspy tongue
    that lolled to one side
    in the afternoon shade?
    If only you too
    could lope across
    the Serengeti Plain
    and grab something
    in your powerful jaws,
    instead of pausing
    at the door and saying,
    as if in afterthought,
    "Write a poem
    while I'm out."


    The Roman Numerals

    It must have been hard
    for the Romans to multiply
    — I don't mean reproduce,
    but to do that computation.

    Step inside a roman numeral
    for a moment, a long one
    such as MDCCLIX. Look
    at the columns and pediments
    and architraves: you cannot move them,
    but how beautiful they are
    and august! However, try to multiply
    MDCCCLXIV by MCCLVIII.

    How did they do it?

    I asked this question some years ago
    and never found an answer
    because I never looked for one,
    but it is pleasant,
    living with this question.

    Perhaps the Romans weren't good at math,
    unlike the Arabs, who arrived
    with baskets of numerals, plenty
    for everyone. We still have
    more than we need today.

    I have a 6 and a 7 that,
    when put side by side, form my age.

    Come to think of it,
    I'd rather be LXVII.


    Butterfly

    Chaung Tzu wrote about the man
    who dreamed he was a butterfly
    and when he woke up
    wondered if he weren't now
    a butterfly dreaming he was a man.

    I love this idea
    though I doubt that Chaung Tzu
    really thought that a man would
    think he is a butterfly,

    for it's one thing to wake up
    from a dream in the night
    and another to spend your whole life
    dreaming you are a man.

    I have spent my whole life
    thinking I was a boy, then a man,
    also a person and an American
    and a physical entity and a spirit
    and maybe a little bit butterfly.
    Maybe I should be more butterfly,

    that is, lurch into a room
    with bulging eyes and big flapping wings
    that throw a choking powder
    onto people who scream and fall dead,

    almost. For I would rescue them
    with the celestial music of my beauty
    and my utter harmlessness,
    my ætherial disregard of what they are.


    Reality

    Reality has a transparent veneer
    that looks exactly like the reality beneath it.
    If you look at anything,
    your hands, for instance, and wait,
    you will see it. Then
    it will flicker and vanish,
    though it is still there.
    You must wait a day or two
    before attempting to see it again,
    for each attempt uses up
    your current allotment of reality viewing.
    Meanwhile there is a coffee shop
    where you can sit and drink coffee,
    and where you will be tempted
    to look down at the cup and see
    the transparent veneer again,
    but that is only because you are overstimulated.
    Do not order another cup. Or do.
    It will have no effect on the veneer.

    Sometimes the veneer becomes detached
    and moves slightly away from reality,
    as when you look up and see a refrigerator
    in refrigerator heaven, cold and quiet.
    But then the veneer snaps back
    to its former position and vanishes.
...