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Sherlocking Tolkien's dróttkvaett poems.

“The Lineaments of Gratified Desire”

He retired to the sea.
There he found what he needed:
a surf-screen to shine his thoughts on,
a solitude wide and dark enough and seamless;
rocks to build the theater physical.

Only the gulls saw stone pile upon stone,
like the identical days of his stone exile
converging to a point just short of the sun
the round irregular walls.
He said the tower would give him a place to write
in the peace he’d sacrificed everything for,
but his typewriter’s mute, and the tower continues to rise.

(1981)

I went back to the bone church.

Chapbooks are poet money. We used to trade them with each other, back in the day, before internet swallowed everything. Now some of those people have died, & from time to time i think of how few copies were ever made & now i have one of the only ones left.

Feed the Birds.