Reading in Bed
by evening light, at the window, where wind blows
it’s not enough to wake with morning
as a child, the insistent urge of habit
sounds, to write a poem, to pore over one’s past
recall ultimate orders one has since doubted
in despair. Inner reality returns
of moonlight over water at Gloucester, as
fine a harbor as the Adriatic, Charles said, before the big storm
blew up to land ancient moorings, shards against sand
of memory at midnight; ah yes the dream begins
of lips pressed against yours over waves, tides,
hour-long auto rides into dawn, when time
pounds a mystery on the beach, to no death out of reach.
From Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners, edited by Joshua Beckman, CAConrad, and Robert Dewhurst © 2015 John Wieners Literary Trust, Raymond Foye, Administrator. Reprinted with the permission of The John Wieners Literary Trust.
John Wieners
John Wieners lived on the periphery of several movements during his lifetime—the Beats, the Black Mountain School, the New York School, the San Francisco Renaissance—and was granted cult status in the poetry community.