27 April 2024
By Philip Kuepper
Nothing out of the ordinary
comes to mind this early hour.
So I must work with what I have.
I must make magic of the everyday.
The floor lamp next my chair
I have reimagined into a lighthouse,
where the oceans of night and morning meet,
seamlessly.
This should give me leverage enough
to see my way forward,
so as not to trip over the rocks of books
that litter the shallows of my room.
In these rocks, in these shallows
are embedded the clams
where my mind will go clamming
for thoughts to open and sup on.
There are Kerouac’s San Francisco poems,
and O’Hara’s Manhattan ones,
clams that don’t hesitate to squirt at me
when my mind touches on them.
Next them, Kliban’s cats,
that make me laugh just to look at them.
There is the Columbia Concise
Encyclopedia, fat with facts,
a five course see-food meal, in itself.
There is a guide on how to plant a flower
garden arranged according
to colors. I am taken
by pink next crimson next rose.
Without my lamp become a lighthouse,
it would be easy for me to trip over these
rocks of books that help hold in place
the shores of my room.
(14 March 2024)