write about the block.

first poem at ten,

my grandfather died,

discovered Walt Whitman.

high school teacher of American lit,

my grandparent’s generation

teacher had a crush on

my grandmother

when they were young

she did not feel the same.

still he trusted these three,

Walt Whitman,

Emily Dickinson,

Edgar Allan Poe.

we memorized the

transcendentalists,

“he had a Roman nose”

“the last leaf upon the tree”,

learned the Gettysburg address

“four score and seven years ago”

I, too, don’t like it.

 

grandma and grandpa

grew tulips and roses,

lilac trees in the backyard.

vegetables, too flourished

rows of corn, parsley patch,

tomatoes, rhubarb, two

vines of grapes,

white and purple

I have no green thumb.

not even a poet’s thumb.

I have a poet’s block

followed by mourning love.