A note never sent-refound

You say your not ready to talk.I understand. Yet
I had to ask twice- You could have emailed me-
you could have told me.
I'm not going to see you after the opening I suspect. This dance we've done, through Cooper - and
has ended.
I'm scared and
relieved
I for one don't know what to do.
I agree -
to talk before going or doing is important now. Essential.

There is so much to say- to know.
Of me.
Of you and
us.
Why I did what I did.
Why
Did you.

You say you cannot make art Now
You said , I think that it was a condition of our relationship.
For me.
Yes.
Up until tonight.
It was one of the Why
I did
Until tonight
my anxiety over us kept me from working.
even
sleeping.
Tonight I finally see I cannot influence any of this. I can't as you said decide how to be,to see you.
us
I will leave us alone
Now.
I'm here
now.
I think you think I miss our past
No
What I know is I
Miss us
You
Me
now

Yes- I don't want others
poets to speak for me anymore
yet
it's all I have now
until we talk
I thought of one of Rexroth's most famous poems tonight
I think it has much to do with why you cannot make art
I know it does with me



GIC TO HAR

It is late at night,cold and damp
The air is filled with tobacco smoke.
My brain is worried and tired.
I pick up the encyclopedia,
The volume GIC TO HAR.
It seems I have read everything in it,
So many other nights like this.
I sit staring empty-headed at the article Grosbeak,
Listening to the long rattle and pound
Of freight cars and switch engines in the distance.
Suddenly I remember
Coming home from swimming
In Ten Mile Creek,
Over the long moraine in the early summer evening,
My hair wet, smelling of waterweeds and mud.
I remember a sycamore in front of a ruined farmhouse,
And instantly and clearly the revelation
Of a song of incredible purity and joy,
My first rose-breasted grosbeak,
Facing the low sun, his body
Suffused with light.
I was motionless and cold in the hot evening
Until he flew away, and I went on knowing
In my twelfth year one of the great things
Of my life had happened.
Thirty factories empty their refuse in the creek.
The farm has given way to an impoverished suburb
On the parched lawns are starlings, alien and aggressive.
And I am on the other side of the continent
Ten years in an unfriendly city

John