JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

Once he was the editor

of a puzzle magazine,

once he was a sleepwalker,

the stone behind the henge

waiting for the sky to fall

and recommence its scribbled crawl

 

Once he was a track

a night immense and black

a graveyard of discarded footsteps—

once he was a nun! A hot cross bun,

a cartoonist drawing faces in the sand

here a forehead, some false teeth

a missing hand

 

Once he was a bow without an arrow

a red wheelbarrow, once a guest

a windmill on a quest

to seek the essence, the straight and narrow

once he was Columbus, discovering

the future in the New World’s

opus numbers

 

All came to naught, battles once fought

were ended, perhaps surrendered

so now he sits this evening with a beer

somewhere in the sunset of his years

still full of his ideas, some brilliant some queer

his past growing fainter, tomorrow near

 

Still filling in the blanks

amid the butterflies, the roar of tanks