THE SAME OLD ME WHEREVER

A pretty photo for your entertainment...

This will be a short one. The book American Poetry: twentieth century, Vol I is a marvelous and all inclusive accomplishment. Musicians are included and folk poetry, more black poets and women poets than probably few other collections of 20th Century poets have included, though I can't be certain of that fact, but it certainly represents a wide range of poetic forms and poets too. 

In my mind, my new bucket list includes the follow item — "to write as many good and true poems as I can in my 80s."  Today I finished another rewrite of the poetry ms of lüshi [a Chinese form of 8 line poetry employed by my current poet hero, Hanshan]. Here's one of them. The idea certainly isn't new, but it's my expression of the idea "wherever you go, there you find yourself."

LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION

After all my early tramping, Hanshan, you’d think I’d recall,

But the urge to get away always got in the way.

I’d hope a new hat rack might hold everything the old could not.

Off I’d go on a wing and a prayer, wearing my chapeau at a jaunty angle.

To hell with everything I left behind — wife, kids, the rental payment.

In those days, I never could afford a mortgage to nail my feet.

Of course the new hat rack functioned very much like the old,

And I’d find myself again, the same old me in the mirror behind the bar.