Meetings with Remarkable Poets

1.

Your face filled the TV screen, speaking about me
and you.

Those few and unsatisfying get-togethers -
fine fare for a poet!

What was at work - that caused me to pass just then
- just as you spoke that line that caused me to know
that you had written (in your just-published-latest-collection)
of our last, uneasy, night in on the tiles?

Caught in a stream of returning memories
not listening, but watching your big head talking,
I switched you off.

A small and satisfying gesture of indifference.

It is a quiet and pleasing thing to lurk, anonymously, in a book
by a fairly famous poet.

One day, I imagine, I shall look myself up in a library
and read what you wrote.

2.

There were three of us in the bunkhouse – in for a week
in retreat with a Zen Master – my first ever retreat -
I was excited.

We were stowing our stuff, arranging our selves, dusting off our buddha-natures.

That evening to meet, that week to spend time with -
time to sit, to walk, to listen, to, to talk, with monks and nuns.

(“That is the greatest happiness,” Buddha said, “to spend time
with monks and nuns.”)

You were being questioned. I was just listening -
entering into the Zen of things.

You answered that you were a poet - of the published kind!

I moved to meet such a rare being, with no idea of a suitable hello,
when you turned to me
and through an eccentric fringe offered a pink comb, shyly,
enquiring if I could ‘do something’ for your hair.

I tried – it was difficult hair – fine and frizzly, with tiny, tight curls.
We shared hair stories, quietly, but when you turned around
for me to fix your fringe,
I saw your poor head - how your skull had been broken.

An old wound split your forehead; a deep valley, at the bottom
a red scar crossing from hairline to eyebrow -
the fringe no great shakes as camouflage.

I breathed in with shock for you, breathed out with a smile for you
and wondered, as I combed, glancing now and then
into your eyes, if I should ask, or not ask.

And whether your asking me to do something for your hair
was some kind of game.
Would I ask? Or not ask, and did you want me to ask, or not ask?

Just then came the voice of the bell,
calling us back to ourselves,
inviting us to Noble Silence.

3.

We had spilled in to that empty space, and
settled ourselves down, and made a circle:

eight tables, two teachers, twenty-one students and their chairs
(not to mention their paraphernalia).

I watched your eyes waving about and feared for your sanity.
I'd read somewhere that wobbly eyes might be a sign
of mental instability.
(After I had read that I found myself watching, everywhere,
for wobbling eyes.)

I feared for my sanity then – I thought
'who is this weird-eyed guy who will be my teacher for three whole months?!'
Wobbly eyes can be difficult to cope with.

Your writing classes were, though, the best part of each day.
I came to know and admire you and your poetry.

Then one day, in Barnstaple, in my habitual trawl
through through the used stuff shops
I found an anthology, calling its poetry 'underground'.
And there you were! And your poem – well – I was shocked -
all that wanking and fucking, and all done by gods!

TJW