While Reading Carver’s ‘Fire’

I borrowed it from the library.
The very first page
was almost gone,
mostly torn out
so his biography read as snippets
and half-sentences,
leaving the rest of his life
to the imagination of the reader.

I think he would have liked this.

Later, I find a stain on the first page
of his essay titled ‘On Writing’.
It looked like blood
and fell right over the bit where he says,
rather than talent or training,

“a writer who has a special way
of looking at things”

is someone to watch out for.

While the idea seems kind of obvious to me,
I don’t know if such a revelation is worth bleeding for;
and wonder if someone had.

Even so, I can't help but think
he would have liked this too.