Once upon a time I received in the US Mail puffy and somewhat wrinkled envelopes from Alfred Starr Hamilton. Inside the envelopes were wads of poems, and outside on the envelope was always the same way his typed address in the left hand corner from "Montclair, N.J." I had to look up where that was on the map. I'm sure I chose and published at least one of the poems in this gorgeous new book by ASH — and if there is any book of poems published in the past few years risen out of the ashes — this one has to be it. As I'm sure Hamilton sent the same poems, most likely, over & over to the same publishers, and maybe his records were a little spotty as to whom took what. Just a guess. By the way, is there any poet who looked and wrote from and deserved such a name?
Tomorrow
Those are the blossoms under the branches
That have been picked, but would have been left there
Those are the broken stars at the back of the wonderbrush
Those are the stars that were kept to put on top of the daisy tops
Tomorrow and next day, and all summer long
Those are the hushabye places as long as ever remembered
Still those are the timelier visions remembered
I never said goodbye to the broken places under the branches
That was all we were ever meant to be ourselves, Tomorrow
A Crust of Bread
why, I often wondered
why I was a poet,
first of all
most of all, I wanted
to have been a bird
if I could have been a bird
but I wanted the starlings
to have been fed,
first of all
The Pool
I never played pool with all the rest
I was so oftentimes off by myself
I didn't know what it was
I didn't know where it was
It never left me alone
It spoke to me time and again
I stared at the pool
I stared at the beautiful face of mankind
And there it was at the bottom of the pool,
One of the clearest dreams I've ever witnessed
A little crawfish at the bottom of the pool,
A little crawfish on top of a sandy beach,
I could have that little thingamajig
I could hug that little thingamajig to myself all of the rest of my life long
Crossroads
yet I walked through the gay city of November
in search of the word for a snowflake
that stayed on a man's overcoat
for I searched the gray winds for none other answer
than I'll never know whyever
I lived at a crossroads of conclusions
for I concluded
that I lit an amber lamp alone in the parlorways
Moon and Stars
I thought of its hindsight
I thought of its foresight
I thought it was wearing its eyes on the back of its head
I thought its eyes were everywhere
I thought it was a star gazing
I thought it was staring upwards
I thought of such dizzying heights
I thought this was upside down
I thought it was observing the underworld
I thought it was observing the wilderness
I thought the stars were on fire
I thought it was observing the moon
I thought it was funny
I thought the moon was for some pumpkin
For a Firefly
if ever
an evening star
January Parlor
But a snowflake stayed on one's lips
I talked to a golden jar of white roses
That stayed in the January parlor
Schoolhouse
I would
If I could
I would like
To do anything for you
As light as the moon
I would like
To go over the green pastures
From then on to follow
This is for the green leaves
This for the yellow leaves
This is for a little green and yellow schoolhouse
By the forsythia hillside
To tell you the truth
If I only could
I would like to write the history of our lives over again
I would like to build you a little Indian schoolhouse
I would like to send you a box of daffodils too
Considering the lilies of the valley
And neither do they spin nor do they toil
And send them back to school
Dark Corner
I wonder if I lived
in a dark corner
all by myself
until the only sun I ever saw
came around in the morning
I wonder if the sunlight
worked its way
through a keyhole
and little by little I was taught
never to tell a lie
I wonder how the light of day
exerted itself
in my presence
Town
Give us time
Give us crickets
Give us a clock
could you build this wonderful town house in the grass
and put a cricket in it by this evening?
Walkative, Talkative
When those are the walkative stars
That talked to the immediate prisoners themselves
When those are the talkative stars
That walked along the narrow sedge pathways
Yet those are lines to another star
That were to have been led for changelings
Around a dark dreambox of another kind
That houses our more talkative stars
Old Songs
Take me back to the days
of why I talked to the moon
Of the immoveable church
When we moved
But the church was immoveable
But the church was your neighbor
Take me back to the days
Of an old walnetto song
To a walnetto blonde
That pinned the white blossoms over the blossom,
and pulled at the heart's strings of the world
That said your best heart
Is your neighbor of old
Sheep
Even the sheep's woolen
Clung in the June distance
And I wanted the needle
That passed through the sheep's woolen
To have caught onto a thread
To a cloud that stayed in the sky
______________________________
Alfred Starr Hamilton
