A Poem for a Thursday #191

Mona Van Duyn was born and raised in Iowa and went on to teach at the University of Iowa and Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Van Duyn was the first woman to serve as poet laureate doing so from 1992 to1993. She was described as writing poems “impressive in their intelligence and their determined attempts to find reason in an unreasonable world.”

I am once again having trouble with my email subscriptions so if you have received this post please go back and read the last one about my latest crafty project. One of these days, my subscription service will be working properly. Hopefully, today is that day.

In police procedurals they are dying all over town,
the life ripped out of them, by gun, bumper, knife,
hammer, dope, etcetera, and no clues at all.
All through the book the calls come in:  body found
in bed, car, street, lake, park, garage, library,
and someone goes out to look and write it down.
Death begins life's whole routine to-do
in these stories of our fellow citizens.

Nobody saw it happen or everyone saw,
but can't remember the car. What difference does it make
when the chld will never fall in love, the girl will never 
have a child, the man will never see a grandchild, the old maid
will never have another cup of cocoa at bedtime?
Like life, the dead are dead, their consciousness,
as dear to them as mine to me, snuffed out.
What has mind to do with this, when the earth is bereaved?

I lie, with my dear ones, holding a fictive umbrella,
while around us falls the real and acid rain. 
The handle grows heavier and heavier in my hand.
Unlike life, tomorrow night under the bedlamp
by a quick link of thought someone will find out why,
and the policemen and their wives and I will feel better.
But all that's toward the end of the book. Meantime, tonight,
without a clue I enter sleep's little rehearsal.

In Bed With a Book
Mona Van Duyn