Two Poems

William Page

J.D. Salinger Revealed at Last

You think now that I am a ghost you can find me on stage
in your local tavern swallowing a sword of fire.
But I am the smoke of your tires spinning out of control.
Already I have climbed above the roof of the Waldorf Astoria
and disappeared into the sound of honking geese,
frantically flying to the theater of absent color.
You are chiseling away at the walls of the bunker
where I wrote, looking between words moldering
in steamer trunks, which when they are opened there
will be yellow fish swimming out in overflowing green water.
It was you who left in my mailbox cryptic notes,
trying to unravel the lines of my aging face, you
pushing your own phrases into the box of my lost voice.
I was the fox that trotted through your back yard leaving
no tracks in the snow white as an envelope of my secretes.
When you breathed the scent of pine gum,
I was near you. The heart of a recluse is cold
as the fire of longing and damper than the limp
maple leaf floating by the scarred curb.
Just when you believe you have unmasked me,
I am nowhere to be found, but in the mirror of your face.

***

Ars Poetica

I know what poems are supposed to be,
a reflection of a snow bird in ice, not
the bird’s feathers and hollow bones
that lift it up into the invisible air.
Not wind, but the likeness of wind.
Not the fusillade of kneeling pistons raising
and lowering themselves in raving prayers,
their exhaust gasses pushed like thunder
back into the chambers of silence. The hint
must be subtle as sound of an unseen wheel turning.
There must be a slight lean into the curve of words,
nothing like rubber’s concrete squeal; the hard road
must be traveled with the gentleness of a light breeze.
Speech can not be louder than a clear whisper.
Movement must be a single ear of corn’s
silken tassel faintly touching down of a young girl’s arm.
But I must speak bluntly. I must direct this to you
while you’re here, to tell you the world is not made
of cotton candy. Even the bird’s soft sky is hard
to transverse, requiring strong wings,
shading a shadow to hold up the mirror of morning
passing through noon into the reflection of evening.

William Page’s poetry has appeared in The North American Review,  The Southern Review, Southwest Review, Nimrod, The Literary Review, American Literary Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Mississippi Review, The Wisconsin Review, Cimarron, The Laurel Review, The South Carolina Review, Ploughshares, Rattle, The Sewanee Review, The Pedestal, and in over a hundred and thirty other literary journals. His third collection, Bodies Not Our Own, received a ($1,000) Walter R. Smith Distinguished Book Award. His collection William Page Greatest Hits 1970-2000 is available from Pudding House Publications. He is founding editor of The Pinch and a retired professor of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Memphis.

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