Shagbark Hickory
Iron cold morning, and me
‘Pensive as a bird / Whose
Vernal coverts winter hath laid
Bare.’ Meaning what a random
Browse and fossicking uncover’d in
Lieu of thinking. Hopkins used
The lines to index a
‘Too so-and-so-all-
Overish’ kind of poetry, an
Unborrowable thing, ‘too essentially Wordsworthian’
To allow for the fatuous
Con and intercedence of my
Twenty-first century sort. So
I make my meshugener stories
Up, so I intercalate, inserting
One more day, for trouble.
