In Kerouac Poem by cahen thrips

what sort of person
presses flowers ‘tween pages
of Jack K's haikus?

kerouac wrote: the
low yellow moon above the
quiet lamplit house

whose fine-tuned fingers
plucked those tiny withered stems
from spring-meadow homes?

why then did you think
a fragile flower will be
stronger when dry-pressed?

petals symbolic
a page of scattered poems
bring verses alive

fathom what they mean
clover vetch and pasque arrayed
in unrhymed triplets

nodding against
the wall, the flowers
sneeze, kerouac writes

how long he now gone?
blow dandelion clock back
turn pages forward

don't discard the past
leave those flowers undisturbed
as punctuation

what I find within
old books from second-hand shops
is what thrills me most


December 2018