About Poems 1969..1994


Birds

Rosemarie and I had gone to Bertucci’s, in Brookline Village, for lunch in the sunken outdoor terrace, in May of 1994. I really am afraid of heights. Enough to dream about them.

For the Birthday of a Friend

His name is John Cushen and he lives in New Haven still. For his birthday Rosemarie made a collage with a skydiver and a flower and so I wrote this poem.

Childhood’s End

Kate trained for ballet for many years. Every child’s body can do this. Puberty induces degrees of difference, and Kate, at 16, alone in Champaign/Urbana, had to make a decision.

Epithalamion for Alligators

Rosemarie had given me a book of drawings, representing each of the orchestral instruments being played by a wonderfully detailed alligator. Friends of ours, professional musicians, married about that time, and I sealed an entirely arbitrary association of ideas in this poem for their wedding.

Existential Generalization

This is a cheap trick, but it was fun to do. The title itself is a technical expression from formal logic, as are many of the terms within the poem.

Moon and Sun

This was a couple of days after our first moon landing.

Names of Earth

Another one of what I sometimes call “the Geek poems”. The art in question is that of designing software.

Our Pond

This image had beset my thoughts for years.


Copyright © Jim Michmerhuizen 2000