Shirley Cochrane's Poems
Answer
Forgiveness--that deep forgetting--If you need it, I can grant it
for I drink Glasses of Lethe water
and dine richly on lotus fruit.
Forget, now--you too. Whatever
happened was in another time
and in a remote country
- named home.
Vision and Revision
I will not voice overpoems written yesterday
or wheedle out of memory
more than is there.
Let each verse howl
as it first comes out
like a child needing
the birth blood
bathed from its eyes
but whose limbs are strong
and already pumping.
Graffiti as a Sure Testament to Love
On an overpass of the Southwest Freewaya fading message reads:
ROBERT & CLAUDIA
PARTY ANIMALS IN LOVE
and this one, on a bridge in Georgetown:
ROBERT & CLAUDIA
TOGETHER FOREVER
Over the years I've thought
about Robert and Claudia
those aging party animals
their old signs bleaching out.
Still together? Living
in a split-level house
with their two and a quar-
ter kids? Or did they split
up, say in 1979, because
the thrill was, you know,
gone?
But wait!
Just yesterday on a slung-up fence
at 12th and F Northwest appeared
ROBERT & CLAUDIA
PARTY ANIMALS
IN FATUATION
as persistent as Kilroy,
these two, still here
beginning all over again.