In Honor of National Poetry Month

Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Overstuffed Garage Closet
With apologies to Wallace Stevens

I
Among the twenty items in the overstuffed garage closet, not snowy at all,
The only moving thing
Was the rake handle as I tried to disengage its tines from the other tools.

II
I was of three minds,
Like an overstuffed garage closet
In which there are three shovels.

III
The tools whirled in the overstuffed garage closet as I tried to remove a trowel.
They were a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and an overstuffed garage closet
Are one too many.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The sound of the rake clanging as I try to remove it from the overstuffed garage closet
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the hoe in the overstuffed garage closet
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine empty closets?
Do you not see how the overstuffed garage closet
Disgorges garden tools at the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the overstuffed garage closet is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the door to the overstuffed garage closet would not close, in or out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of overstuffed garage closet
Regardless of the color of the evening light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For an overstuffed garage closet.

XII
The river is moving.
The overstuffed garage closet must be overflowing.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The overstuffed garage closet sat
Biding its time, not even needing a cedar limb.