Poems Niederngasse

Chuck Levenstein

Arguments for Sending
a Poet to Camp


I.

Is poetry an over-heated room,
New York apartment always steaming,
Bikram yoga, drinking water forbidden
lest you lower body heat -

It's August for God's sake!

Why can't poems be Nantucket breeze
before the sun comes up?

Why can't poems be ice,
save the butter,
chill the gin,
save mind from dissolving
in a Galician trance?

II.

The pleasure of an August morning lies
not in bells nor B-flat mass; the light
is humid green, sky hints of hurricane.

Sun flowers and dahlias, red-rose bushes,
wild purple lustrife: in the lush New England
jungle, no humility, only display.

Nature does what it can, lets Adam
worry about the supernatural.

Charles Levenstein is a contributing editor for Poems Niederngasse.