The Poem

She always said she could not write a poem—

she, who set up the Portsmouth Poet Laureate program;

who admired the easy poem, the difficult to comprehend;

who painstakingly distinguished the best 

from among the local poets whose mystical, 

unattainable talent she so revered.

Finally, she was moved to write about the summer house

which her husband had bought for her.

She extolled “the rhythm of the sea: 

azure to gun-metal gray to azure,” 

“the scrub oak and pitch pine, whose roots retained 

the sandy bluff like witches’ hands,”

and she wrote, “All of this you have given me,” 

then she hid it in a drawer. Many years later,

cleaning out her house after her death, I found it.

It was untitled. 

No one ever told her it was good.