The writing of poems
and the living of life
seem to require

If I were to sit in this chair
laughing
when you come into the room

Mmmm
I get up and am seized by the present
Whose presence is

When I am dead and gone
they will say of me,
“We never could figure out 

“I’m going out for a pack of cigarettes.”
  At one point in the history of our language —roughly
from the 1920s into the early 1950s is my guess —those

The funny thing is that he’s reading a paper 
As if with his throat 
With the bottom half folded neatly under his chin 

You think of everything: 
Modem silence, where I go back continually 
To you, as does everyone, it seems…

I love you. Woody,
when you peck
on the head

I would like to tell you a story.
My little wife suggested that I tell you this story
because she received such pleasure from it,

And according to 
the stranger first ice sheets will thaw
sea levels will