Poetry Magazine
Minor Poet
His last composed poem, "Over My Head,"
closes with the evening tide
coming in as the light fails over Brighton Beach.
In the years of The Great Plague,
he lived with his mother and brother
and wrote the Elegies that remain unpublished,
under the eaves in an unfinished room above
his mother's late-night television vigil.
He wrote to a ghostly laugh-track
in the night. Though he cut out and saved
lurid, five-color magazine pictures
of The South Pacific, The Aegean; though
he hoped for a winter crossing by steamer
until his final weakness set in,
underneath he was a city boy
whose poems drifted like a dinghy
in small inlets—Gravesend, Rockaway—
out too far for safety, in sight of land.
Source: Poetry (April 2002).
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This poem originally appeared in the April 2002 issue of Poetry magazine
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Poem Categorization
SUBJECT Poetry & Poets, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, Disappointment & Failure, Living, Nature, Arts & Sciences
POET’S REGION U.S., Mid-Atlantic
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