JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

that someone who has spent his life

wandering under wild figs

in clover filled meadows

by chatty creeks and pools

 

watching a grasshopper climb a stalk,

how a mole noses up

from his earthen abode

 

or composing a sonnet

inspired by cawing crows

 

would surely understand

 

the lament of a felled forest

the cry of a polluted lake

the horror in a hillside’s eyes

regarding its quarried baldness

 

before packing his wood-pulp paper

and his graphite-veined cedar pencils

back into his animal hide satchel

 

before driving home in his

fume belching jeep

before spending his evening

getting drunk, wandering

streets wet with rainbows of

diesel tears

 

you would think someone like that

would be wiser

than the rest of us

or nicer –

somehow ‘different’

 

save endangered primates perhaps,

volunteer for a hospital in Africa?

 

rather than munching that paté

at his book launching