Apocrypha

What I meant to write,

what I promised to remember--
crumpled papers in trash cans
 

hotel maids might read,

learning English by discard, 

aftertaste of evenings I didn’t spill. 

A man writes poems for the dead,

then burns the words when they're done, 

in perfection of which life?

Rain always falls in these mountains,

this compilation of refusals,

this unpublished life,

Apocryphal work.

 

                                                                                                Cheryl Emerson

                                                                                                                  7/4/2013