MY PONY

by Lee Stern

I don’t know if my pony likes it where he is.
Or if he’d rather be back with me.
I spent a lot of time asking myself that question.
When I should have been asking myself other questions.
Like, are they feeding him apples?
And letting him roam freely in the field when he chooses?
Have they given him a quiet place in the barn
where he can be with his mother
when that strikes him as the thing that he wants to do?
Or are they doing other things, perhaps?
Are they letting him roam over to where the bell tower used to be?
And where the man who rang it quietly one day,
rode steadily away on his horse?

THESE ARE THE PLACES

by Lee Stern

These are the places that I’ve been to.
And that I’m so anxious to tell you about.
I’d like you to give me some of your free time
so I can do that.
And some of the places had different kinds of lumber in it.
And other places didn’t have any lumber at all.
And keeping track of which place was which was the hardest part of all.
I tried to keep notes about it.
Because I thought that was the best way to keep things straight.
But I got tired of the notes.
And decided to commit it to my memory.
And now I can tell you that one place was just like every other place.
There would be fractions on the ground.
And birds of quality stepping onto the wayward brims of their hats.

THE WAY OUT OF HERE

by Lee Stern

Maybe the way out of here is the best way to go.
And we should follow the clowns,
who seem to have a grasp on what’s going on.
If we stay where we are,
native grasses may not bloom every autumn.
And every summer, when we ask where they’re coming from,
a different answer
would mean that a different portion of the day would become ours.
I say we get out of here as quickly as possible.
I say we gather up our favorite coins and disappear
like the rabbit that discovered a positive universe was already here.
Waiting to bring solace to our hearts.
And music to the touching of our brains.

THE REASON THE STORM

by Lee Stern

The reason the storm was so bad
was I didn’t ask for it to be easier.
I kept my mouth shut and that was the problem.
If I had gotten down on my hands and knees
and prayed to God, believe me,
the storm would have been easier to take.
There would be a few little flourishes of the wind
and that would be the end of it.
Tomorrow they would have said it was a little insignificant uptake in the draft.
And so what was the big deal?
Tomorrow they would have said other things
to take away the pensive quality of today,
meaning, that if I had only said something, I would have known
better than anyone else in the world.
I would have been there for the last one
of the brilliant first circles that I saw.

A COUNTRY

by Lee Stern

There is a country I am going to that is not the old country.
But it is a country of different hats and different methods.
Older people who have been there say that it’s a place of expectations.
I’m not going to rave about it.
But I will say that people who have been there
after they suddenly return, seem astonished to actually be back.
And to get to this country, as you might have imagined,
you need a ticket and a bottle of sweet smelling liquid.
Having two tickets is even better.
Although if you show up with three of them,
all of the books you’ve ever read will turn their pages for you
and you’ll be astonished that you were never able to do it yourself.
For this is a country you might have read about.
You might have seen the sentences placed on the ground
nearer to the edge of a waterfall than you might have expected.
And praying for it, you might have seen its dogs
placed in a line that, though it couldn’t be reconnoitered,
might have comforted the magicians it owned.
And the suitors who were begging to go free.

SHOVELING DIRT

by Lee Stern

I’m sorry I can’t shovel the dirt anymore
in the manner in which you’ve come to expect me to do it.
I thought that I was doing a pretty good job.
But the way you looked at me
indicated you lost confidence in what I was doing.
And wanted somebody else to step in and take my place.
And I’m sorry if I didn’t put the dirt in the right place
or if I didn’t spread it evenly.
I tried to subscribe to the goals that you outlined.
But I had a lot of things on my mind
during both the nights and the days.
so I wasn’t always successful in reaching
out for the correct operation. Or for the correct solution.
I was merely trying to move one pile of dirt to another place.
From where it had been located.
And from where safeguards
had been removed from the places that we dreamed would always last.

THE PIANOS

by Lee Stern

The pianos are all moving at their own speed.
They’re going from one place to another.
And when they get to the one place, they can’t stay very long.
So they have to keep moving.
People wave at the pianos but it doesn’t slow them down.
Nothing seems to slow them down, in fact,
And when somebody says he thinks they’re slowing down,
we know that he’s a fool.
And everybody’s a fool who shares the same opinion.
When you see a piano that’s moving away from you,
the best thing to do is to get out of the way.
Don’t try to be a hero about it and get it to stop.
Let the people listening to it be the heroes.
Let the notes, as they surround you with a feeling of wonder,
acclimate the movement of your senses
and move mountains to a place you can live.