He didn’t think it an actors beat
My turn at the table, I told him
We’d had the old Poet Laureate by months before,
But I appreciate a poet who
Actually read his own poetry
Rather than posing as the US poetry pedagogue in chief
He told me he rather liked the old PL,
And I agreed I rather liked him too
Whille he endorsed a book to me and Christine
And a lessor volume for our cat Fluffy,
“That’s ‘Miss’ Fluffy,”
I asked him, “I noticed,
You always paused a moment before reading,
Then with a wipe of your hair you launch into it,
As a theater major we call that an actor’s beat,
Have you ever taken acting lessons?”
“No, it’s just I’m trying to focus on my reading,”
I still recall the payoff in his poem about
Cuban Thanksgiving Turkey;
“Dry,”
He didn’t think it an actors beat
I apologized for those behind in line for taking so long
And we shook hands and I walked off,
Out the door into the night where I found my pickup in the lot
And neither did I think it an actor’s beat,
To just stand there a moment,
Absorbing all the poetic virtues of my Oxford White Pickup truck,
Then, with a wipe of my hair,
I unlocked the door and launched into it
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