taken from sleep

you that sang machiavelli patient in october
your hands open your palms down
do you know who I turn to all the time I am dying?

today Jane cut some coriopsis
I looked out her window the one with the cactus plants
remembering how you sequester your visions
in a wide angle lens

Alison and I used to go over to Jane Morrel's house on College, off of Iles, to hang out with Jane. We met Jane in Knoepfle's first poetry class at SSU in the fall of 1972. She was 69 and had had heart surgery fairly recently. She was also one of the truly great poets in town in those days, though we at first thought she'd be another old lady writing flower poems. Well, Jane did write flower poems, some of the most moving stuff I have ever read. Alison always had a specific relationship to Jane; and I was sort of an axis between the two of them. Jane did love Alison and her work, though she worried about her lifestyle. Alison's birthday is in October, the sixth. She talked about reading The Prince when I first knew her.