Perfect Reader

I spend all day in my office, reading a poem

by Stevens, pretending I wrote it myself,

which is what happens when someone is lonely

and decides to go shopping and meets another customer

and they buy the same thing. But I come to my senses,

and decide when Stevens wrote the poem he was  thinking

of me, the way all my old lovers think of me

whenever they lift their kids or carry the trash,

and standing outside the store I think of them:

I throw my arms around a tree, I kiss the pink

and peeling bark, its dead skin, and the papery

feel of its fucked-up beauty arouses me, lends my life

a certain gait, like the stout man walking to work

who sees a peony in his neighbor’s yard and thinks  ah,

there is a subject of white interpolation , and then

the petals fall apart for a long time, as long as it takes

summer to turn to snow, and I go home at the end and watch

the news about the homeless couple who met in the park,

and then the weather, to see how they will feel tomorrow.

MARGINALIA

I will be serious today. I need to work. Even if the temptation is strong to deviate from the plan. I always deviate from the plan. It would be nice if I can rely on myself for a change. Also, I need to stop buying new notebooks. I have ten new ones sitting on my desk, all bought just this month. There’s something wrong with me.

ABOUT MARY RUEFLE

Though poet and essayist Mary Ruefle was born outside Pittsburgh, she spent her youth moving around the United States and Europe with her military family. She has published over a dozen books of poetry, including   Dunce   (2019), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award,   My Private Property   (2016),   Indeed I Was Pleased with the World   (2007), and   The Adamant   (1989), which won the Iowa Poetry Prize and   A Little White Shadow   (2006), her book of erasures. She is also the …  (more)

Though poet and essayist Mary Ruefle was born outside Pittsburgh, she spent her youth moving around the United States and Europe with her military family. She has published over a dozen books of poetry, including   Dunce   (2019), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award,   My Private Property   (2016),   Indeed I Was Pleased with the World   (2007), and   The Adamant   (1989), which won the Iowa Poetry Prize and   A Little White Shadow   (2006), her book of erasures. She is also the author of the essay collection   Madness, Rack, and Honey   (2012) and the work of fiction   The Most of It   (2008). ( Source )

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ENDNOTES

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ON THIS DAY

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The Sun by Mary Oliver

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The Roses by Mary Oliver

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Sometimes by Mary Oliver

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Perfect Reader by Mary Ruefle

2011

Self-Portrait by Adam Zagajewski

2005