A poem must be as short as the poet’s life
or millennia longer: there is no in-between.
Either it dies with you or lives on, this strife,
and if you conclude I’m given to extremes

I won’t object: give me not the oak’s kind shade
but a Sonoran desert sun’s unrelenting rage.
O, what use have I for the confused serenade
of an understudy pacing to and fro backstage?—

I demand the raised curtain, the crowd, the lights;
the lonely hours of writing and rehearsal I abhor;
and as when the Swainson’s Hawk on my arm alights
and speaks not of its peregrinations or the wars

it waged to arrive here, I too long to arrive,
uncomplaining, on perfection’s placid shore;
only when I search time’s well-worn archive
for unimpeded solace do I find that final door

I can’t see beyond. Not that this blindness scares
me: I reach for the slippery handle as one does a chart
of the stars. Rather, I note the pastor putting on airs,
the undertaker’s greed, and believe I alone stand apart.