Saltpetre and Robert Frost

         At the boys' school I attended

         we all believed the legend

         of saltpetre in the mashed potatoes.

         The salt was said--as when grease fires

         flare in kitchens--to deaden the unruly

         flames of forbidden sexuality.

         But if saltpetre was there truly,

         it was notable for ineffectuality.

         This was the same school where

         they brought in some big names--

         Oppenheimer, Robert Frost,

         legends in their own lifetime--

         to spend a week on campus in

         the "Visiting Fireman" program.

         They'd sit with us in class

         and meet with small groups

         of hand-picked students--

         myself included--who,

         with all roads open, asked

         only the most general questions,

         the vaguest of directions.

         Frost was old, gentle,

         white-haired, ever respectful

         of us, but had an air as though

         always holding back a laugh

         at some constant running joke

         as if his intercourse with us

         was just a playful fragment

         of an ongoing dialogue

         between two lovers, the way

         you'd sit a three-year-old

         on your knee and tell her

         in her mother's hearing she

         would be even more beautiful

         than her mother, if only such

         perfection were possible, and the words

         are heartfelt appreciation,

         the hyperbole is slight;

         the lovers' joke is in

         the indirection.

         Some people ask me today,

         "Why do you write poetry?"

         Sometimes I say to them

         that it's my Irish blood;

         other times I tell them how I shook

         the feathery, parchment hand of

         Robert Frost when I was seventeen,

         maybe something took.

         But if I say that, they ask

         why I lost so many years

         before I started writing.

         Sometimes I answer that I counted cost;

         other times I tell the legend

         of saltpetre past, highlighting

         the fact that it and Frost

         kicked in at last

         about the same time.