A Glorious Day

A glorious day—sunlight on everything

A white rock shines in the Vermont woods

That’s Joe Brainard’s grave an American poet

1942–1994 graduate of an Oklahoma high school

Wearing dark-rimmed glasses Who has read your poems?

Under the green mountains the lake is quiet the birds are napping

I remember water lilies summer near its end

When he died Kenward brought it here

A rock through the woods bears and fallen leaves make way

White like a bone in his memory no words

In the sixties they were here drinking

Smoking weed listening to the pines watching sunset on the hill

I touch the rock recoil as if scorched

So cold like the geniuses’ foreheads

Cool like a rock

In this world that burns like a furnace