Wearing my soft black Australian hat
I walk my friends’ dog down Panchita Street.
I’ve been house-sitting, dog-walking, reading all week
Richard Brautigan, who wrote that the beauty

is all in the saying, who would not tie
the bird of lunacy by a short string
to his toe, but rather would let her fly
in long loopy moves, like a book’s page-turning,

all in the name and the acting-out
of freedom, who shot off his head absolutely,
done in, they say, by the Bitch Fame-Goddess,
broken on her gerbil-treadwheel,

depressed, uncheered, remaining a time
unidentified so de-headed there
and vodka-drowned and Not, in Bolinas,
California, talk about freedom.

I think he would have liked my hat
and surely my friends’ dog Ida, black-and-white
border collie with yearning eyes
who’d herd anything to safety, sheep

or zephyr, doing her dog-work. “Fame
is the spur,” blind Milton wrote, but added
little of use in Bolinas about
“these terrifying honors.”

© 2000, Barry Spacks

Known mainly as a poet/teacher, Barry Spacks has brought out various novels, stories, three poetry-reading CDs and ten poetry collections while teaching literature and writing at M.I.T. and U C Santa Barbara. His most recent book of poems, Food for the Journey, appeared from Cherry Grove in August, 2008. Over the years his poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review and hundreds of other journals.

Back to the February 3, 2004 post > “Fame and the lives of the poets”
Back to the January 30, 2004 post > “It’s Richard Brautigan’s birthday”