For Amelia the Hun
My daughter makes a rhyme off "spirea"
adding a syllable: spi-a-ree-a.
Which is silly and constant.
I can't hear the real word.
Clouds are zooming north after an early morning storm.
I imagine Homer,
arthritic and blind,
felt this, imagining Helen
and the pain which beauty brings:
chiming words, Spring's first blossoms,and a young girl.
He pulls at his cheeks,
like my grandfather sucking through his choppers,
and all the monotonous formulae fail him.
A girl chatters beside him.
He wants to write a lyric;
there is sun on his face.
A glacial hunger robs his morning.
The girl is moving around, piling stones together for a house.
We have only two poems by Homer,
good ones,
others interupted, no doubt, by girls.
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