Truck

3 Poems by Fred Wolven

PLEASE GIVE ME A DRUM,
DINNER WILL HAVE TO WAIT

 
This is a new composition becoming
something with a fresh voice,
like a portrait of a woodlot scene in language
akin to a modern, new mode
for expressing minutiae
oft times like though not Queen Anne’s Lace
peopling a meadow.

Ah, remembering,
he said it better than I,
march on, march on
for the stretch to reach the stream
is an hour or so from here,
and this poem, heavens,
I just don’t know now,
may be another day’s journey or yet perhaps
even a story recollection in front of us,
and some tales are difficult to mesh
in a finite manner.

So, ah, where is my flute?
Please give me a drum.
I’ll refresh at the stream,
dinner will have to wait.
It is now Spring,
and love, that yet new feeling,
is nearer in the air.

WEARING CHANTILLY LACE

I couldn’t help notice he was all decked out

in Chantilly lace, even more so, I suspect

than Prince Charles when he was young.

If one can so clothe in their fifth or sixth decade,

then why not strut about as the head rooster

organizing a hen house whatever the number

in the lot.  After all, the smallest field mouse

would, if it could, disguise itself to resemble

a lizard to not attract birds of prey on a

summer’s day.  And then I remember, quite

out of character, how it feels, sometimes,

when I prepare for the day, as though

I am dressing a battlefield wound, covering

what will become a scar so unlike the

remarkable multi-colored free-standing

faces of wildflowers dotting mountain-side

meadows one encounters backpacking

the trails in Georgia or even Tennessee. 

SERIAL POEMS, GROUP 4: ARTISTS

# 1

What did Chopin do

when he misplayed the fingering

what did he need

to recover his balance

when he slipped off the stool

Do you believe Mozart realized

his Concerto for Clarinet

would be the backdrop for

a award winning movie

I remember viewing Picasso’s Chicago

sculpture, called either The Picasso or

Picasso’s Chicago, located in Dailey Plaza

and noticing its imaginative form

whether patterned after an attractive woman

or Picasso’s pet dog or strictly an abstract

is of little importance

as it is a remarkable work of art

I used to wonder if Hitchcock was

so vain that he had to include himself

within each of his movies, but then

I merely figured he was only adding

a subtle element to the films

something which would be noticed

and questioned but not puzzling for viewers

The question is not

what makes an artist an artist

but what makes a creation worthy

and why does some work become classic

Fred Wolven is retired from academic life, the teaching portion, and having re-established Ann Arbor Review as an international journal, he continues the quest for fashioning just the right poem, and gaining a better understanding of the enigma that is his and that which was the late Theodore Roethke’s. After all, Roethke once said, “What I love is near at hand.” Thus, there is much yet left to be explored; plus, as he noted, “Being, not doing, is my first joy.”  What with nature’s beauty all around, and having opted to re-open himself to love and life, and still seeking to define his identity, he writes on, writes on…