Tricycle

(an Ashbery Erasure poem)

About this unhappiness:
Run out and stay a minute.
Roll up in a blanket.

That's how they looked,
Tied to no actual drift.

Spoons were put up for sale.

We stood in our back alleys,
Chagrin brilliant on our faces.

I don't know. Why does one write?

I replied to your waking
And the affair of sleeping and waking began.

Look, a fish is coming to save us.

Maybe unimportance isn't such a bad thing after all.

Copyright © 2007 David Dodd Lee All rights reserved
from Passages North
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission