David W. McFadden

I’ve never seen a raindrop fall on a frog’s head but you have. You say the frog wiped away the water with his wrist and that’s good enough for me.

   Ever since I first heard it fifteen years ago your poem on the death of your son has been flitting in and out of my mind. And now I see there are two versions, the first having been revised on the later death of your daughter, in 1819, of smallpox. And now I want you to know that I hope you’ve been reunited with your sons and your daughters and your wives and your father, and that I prefer the first version.

   The sun has dropped behind the mountains and the tiny cars on the long winding road way over on the other side of the lake have their lights on. And a sense of amazement springs up, amazement that we live in a world where the sun continually rises and sets.

   The Marasmius oreades (delicious when fried with bacon) have formed a fairy ring in the shape of a giant number 3 in the courtyard lawn, reminding me of the time I saw three motorcycles parked diagonally at the curb in front of 111 Brucedale Avenue.

   In October you can look at the sides of the mountains and see the patterns made by the deciduous trees which have become bright yellow or orange among the coniferous which have remained dark green. Sometimes it seems like a territorial war up there but the conflict between the two types of trees is probably more in my mind than on the slopes.

   This morning the sky is blue but the tops of the mountains cling to thick giant puffs of pink and grey cloud. A small white cloud rises from the surface of the lake and tries to reach the big ones up above but by the time it gets halfway there it has almost completely disappeared.

   It’s pleasant to be so unhurried that you can see even the slowest-moving clouds moving. A part of me says I should be ashamed of myself but you know the more time you waste the more you get. It’s like money.

   On a rainy windy October moring a grey Volkswagen sits at the side of the road. It’s covered with hundreds of small wet yellow leaves plastered on the trunk, on the hood, on the roof – in a strangely satisfying pattern. Was it the rain and the wind or was it a subtle and patient artist with a pot of glue? Of course it was the wind and the rain and of course it’s a hackneyed idea. But for a moment I wonder. As you would have.

   It’s pleasant to have a cup of tea and think of you, Issa, and to think of others in the twentieth century having a cup of tea and thinking of you, Issa.

Going to stay some time before hopping

on the train all the way to Como.

Disoriented in London. It’s so warm,

humid, but human, overcast and muggy.

Joy’s not well, she got sick in Egypt.

String quartet at St. Dunstan’s in Fleet Street.

Violinist cut her finger in a kitchen

accident and hadn’t played for a year.

Microscopic surgery. Cut nerve.

But now she thinks she’s going to be fine.

After the wine and cheese reception (tacky!)

(but nice) took picture of an old statue

of Queen Elizabeth (the first) that had just

been discovered in somebody’s basement

and installed over the sacristy door.

Walking all through Westminster buying slides.

Weatherman on BBC-1:

Today most wet spots will become

dry and most dry spots will become wet.

Of course he said this with a smiling face.

1. Every Sunday at noon during the summer the guy next door (Frank by name) treats his kids to a big watermelon. They mill about on the verandah and lawn eating big slices of it, and it is funny to hear, as the well-dressed devout file out of Garside Gospel Church (“Where the HOLY BIBLE IS WHOLLY TAUGHT”) half a block away, bells chiming, neat fussy Frank in a booming voice call out, “Be careful what you do with the seeds.”

2. I’m in my cellar study
keeping cool

writing this poem quickly
because Joan is coming DOWN
with a KNIFE

and a cold
watermelon.

3. bpNichol hates watermelon.