"The Talking Machine" and Other Poems
1974
Comb-bound: 69 pp.
Published: 1997
Price: $9.95
BUY THE BOOK from Amazon.com
"The Talking Machine" and Other Poems provides startlingly clear glimpses into the author’s personal life, such as on "quiet Sundays...spent outside of time" with his wife, friends, and family, as well as his "6 a.m. to 9 p.m. existence" as a young salesman, including sharp details from his frequent business trips to small Midwestern outposts.
Planting
This small, white field, which I sow with seeds
My calligraphy broadcasts beneath no rain,
Yields no harvest. My parallel thoughts
Become blighted each season. Unborn wheat
And corn are verses my forlorn poetry re-
Peats, while I pay a scarecrow, frozen
To the paper field's white, wintry sky,
To frighten creatures intent upon bounty
That will never reach market, get eaten
By eyes hungering for mixed garden rhyme.
When I've finished tilling this ground
And these seeds are buried beneath earth
In silence, like words lost in dead books,
Then will we wait in hopes of new blooms.
