OCCUPANTThe sad mailbox of my extreme youth, what did it ever deliver? The only...
A CRITICPick up your socks. Clean the house once in a while. Go to the dentist. ...
HISTORIANPiles and piles of books, boxes of documents, photographs, bones, shreds of clothes...
YOU WHO KNOWI was just enough bigger that I could wrestle you into the clean straw of the mow...
GRIFFY LAKEI spread my smooth water like a lap and caught the trees' faces where they fell...
URIA BYLER'S ELEGY FOR PALMER LEHMAN
Palmer Lehman has been gone for quite a few years.
Worked till his 70th birthday,
big husky man, never shirked
from any job, but the company's policy
forbade anyone working after being 70.
Working as a security guard
at a factory in Middlefield
his heart started to fail,
and one cold winter day
he walked out to get his mail.
About ten feet from the house
he fell over dead from a heart attack.
His retarded daughter in the house
assumed her father
spent the night with friends.
Next day the bread man found him
partly snowed under
his mail still clutched in his hand.
--from The Budget