Back among the Living

Dick Allen

I.
Back among the living, recovered from my sickness
or past lives, or both, however you want to read me,I seek out stone fences. I try to amuse. I wander
here and there beneath Earth’s great blue skies.I find a railroad trestle and walk across it,
arms outstretched as if I’m a scarecrow.In a dark alley, I draw a tic-tac-toe game
in blue and yellow chalk upon a brick wall,leaving the game for whoever comes along to fill it in
or ignore. Que sera sera, as my mother used to say.“What am I?” she’d ask. “A service elevator? A fire escape?
The last piece of peanut brittle in an oval tin?”
 II.
Among the living, when I enter any new room,
I look out every window possible,drawing back drapes, raising up Venetian blinds
and bamboo shades to see what I can see,like the bear that went over the mountain
who found on the other side of the mountainonly the other side of the mountain,
his story a little piece of crazy Zen.
 III.
And when, among the living, someone floats
an idea about the size of a bar of Ivory soap,I try to be the first to grasp it, so eager
to make a fool of myself, I becomeashamed of my reaching. I eat Chinese food.
I worship in banks. I prostrate myselfin wholesale stores beneath towering stacked goods,
and when I sleep, which isn’t very much,I find myself dreaming of tree surgeons
cutting down everything beside my bed.
 IV.
This living, I tell anyone who will listen,
makes about as much sense as a dirigible,or why so many spend their lives
trying to avoid the certainty one dayDeath will meet them head on. The last thing they’ll see
will be the prow of a ship, a train cowcatcher,a Chevrolet grill. Oh well, as my father
used to whisper when he’d finished an ice cream cone,that’s all there is. Que sera sera. What can you do
but lick your fingers and get on with it.

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Dick  Allen

Dick Allen (1939-2017) published ten collections of poetry, including Zen Master Poems (Wisdom Inc./Simon & Schuster, 2016) and This Shadowy Place (St. Augustine’s Press, 2014), winner of the New Criterion Poetry Prize. His many other awards include the Robert Frost Prize for Poetry, the Hart Crane Poetry Prize, the Union League Civic & Arts Foundation Poetry Prize, and the May Caroline Davis Poetry Prize from the Poetry Society of America. He taught for many years at the University of Bridgeport. From 2010 to 2015 he served as Connecticut’s poet laureate. He was a valued friend of Poetry Daily and the second poet to be featured on this website (April 8, 1997).

The Gettysburg Review

Winter 2017

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Gettysburg College

Editor
Mark Drew

Managing Editor
Lauren Hohle

Founding Editor
Peter Stitt

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