! ! After Poetry-Reading (With Apologies To Robert Frost) Poem by Michael Shepherd

My library door’s still open
with its invitations and its promises

and empty shelves waiting to be filled
and on the table two or three new books

yet unread; but I’m done with poetry-reading now.
I’m sleepy; I’m full of poetry;

smell of poetry; taste of poetry;
close to, you can hear me buzz..

I can’t get the sound of other poets
out of my head.

Sometimes it’s envy; sometimes
just annoyance, like the sound

of the man next door with his buzz-saw;
and I can’t help hearing, too,

the sound of postboy bringing yet more books
by other poets; the presses rumbling

with yet more poetry books to come..
some, I fear, they’ll ask me to ‘review’..

yes, I’ve had too much of what
I helped to start – that great harvest

of ‘American Poetry’ ten thousand thousand
graduates of college courses;

chapbooks, self-print, little mags, by the barrel-load
and so many bad apples to each barrel;

fruiting like sour crabs
on the dead wood of faculty appointments;

how much wood can this woodchuck chuck,
amidst the woods and two paths’ luck?

jeez, I’m sleepy; feel a long sleep coming on;
the book I’m holding slides from my hands,

its pages turn without my turning them;
like you, my fingers, mind… frost-bitten.