Ed Baker


from As I Re:Call

# 1.

I met a Chinese girl forty-five years ago today was on a Greek island
she was barely nineteen She was so cute that the men and the boys
in town lusted after her all that she had to do when she wanted any-
thing was to walk her walk up to the Square and in her walking and in
her smiling and In her charming ways she got everything that she
desired now in this old hermit's mind she resides Under this tattered
wool blanket in his memories   What is keeping him warm is mystery a
daily diet of figs and prunes keeping him regular

in a too-busy-mind
she yet walks through
over and over again

# 2.

Dawn is here and this morning's
minion
Birds a-flutter squirrel eating her
fig tree fecundated pollen through
the roof piss-ants feasting on these
crumbs old man spending time sit-
ting alone seventy-two years with all
of this watching weeds growing
seducing himself with memories of long ago
...just an happy horny old bonze thinking

today I will see her again

# 3.

counts his every syllable his every other word
where each precisely falls upon and leaves
the page  : his friends roam in and out of
his vision   settle into their own concerns
larger gaps to go into and the silences
little more and nothing less than any other's
clouds in thinking   right here on their own
terms   these   mornings


# 4.

old man with long beard continues his
just sitting in the here   such-as-it-is
activity opens yet another love poem
see's from this distance her stepping
out of that ball-and-claw bathtub tawny
body bubbles glisten she turns his way
slip is into this erotic reflection   can see
clearly of then and when they   touched


Ed Baker writes that these "are the first four pieces AND what might be the cover of a chapbook that I am now working on..."
 
 
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