For years I tried to conceal from the villagers that I
wrote poetry
I didn’t want them to know that I was an oddball
I didn’t want the young men with beards wearing
baseball caps who come to the liquor store in their
pickups to buy sixpacks to know that I was some
kind of sissy
I decided it was prudent to buy the Daily News
instead of the Times at the drugstore
I burned my poem drafts at home before I took the
trash to the dump, kids scavenge around there and
the old man who does the recycling is nosey
I took every precaution
But our town is not an easy place to keep secrets,
everybody knows everybody and they gossip when
they’re getting their mail at the post office
Things began to come apart
A young man with long hair and a city accent showed
up and asked in the stores where the poet Laughlin
lived
Then a pipe burst and the plumber told people that he
saw thousands of books stacked in the cellar, some
of them in foreign languages
Next day the head of the volunteer fire department
came, pretending to check the wiring
I began to get a bit paranoid; the town trooper is
supposed to check each rural road once a week but
he came up our road past my house three days in
succession
The axe fell when somehow a reporter for the county
paper heard the rumors and there was a little item:
local poet caught speeding twice on 272, Motor
Vehicles may suspend license
Much has changed in my life now
Nobody has laughed at me in the street (I’m over six
feet, weight 245, and look pretty fit for my age)
but they look at me in a funny way
I don’t go to Apple House our grocery store any more
because a little girl with her finger in her nose
pointed me out to the check-out lady and asked her
something; now I get my liquor and supplies in the
next towns and order Honeybaked Hams from
Virginia by mail
My life is all different now that they know I write
poems.
But if they think they can shame me out of it they’re
very much mistaken. I’m not breaking any law
I’ll go on with it unless they have me declared a
public nuisance and have me sent to the Institute
I’ve heard there is a poor old fellow in the Institute
who claims he is Henry Wordsworth Longfellow.
He’ll understand and be my friend; we can recite to
each other if they won’t let us have paper and
pencils.
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