Tuesday, August 18, 2020

walking by St. Elizabeths

for some reason 
i remember how
green
the grass was behind the bars.
the frightening blue
of sky.

the clarity of that memory
surprises me, even now. it may
have been 1964 or 5.

the wide manicured
field, a pasture
of grass and trees
that lay before the red bricks
that held
the insane
inside.

a place where one would expect
to see horses,
or languid cows.

and those that were allowed
to wander
the yards, they looked
strangely no different
than you
or i.

but there they were, captured
for reasons
beyond 
our reasoning.
trapped inside. it's where

they kept
Ezra Pound for some time.
and yet
never stilling his pen,
never
fixing, thank God,
his brilliant mind.

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