My early days I spent under a blanket in a crib.
I don’t remember my first baby coat.
I recall a coat of arms, no weapons
mother, grandmother, father’s arms,
two crossed soup spoons, a jar of horseradish.
Soon I had a warm overcoat,
I was proud I could button and unbutton
before I knew about King Lear’s button,
Gogol’s Overcoat.
I had a brown wool coat with a hood,
green and black trees along the bottom.
I was proud walking to school in Kew Gardens,
I was a bear, the forests around me kept me warm.
I saw children without feathers or overcoats,
I remember flocks of lapels, pockets, sleeves,
coats flew in winter skies, while I,
like a coat in the closet, grieved to be worn.
* * *
I wanted to know.
What if I named a boat Overcoat?
I would never name a boat Handkerchief.
A big blow might blow blow me down.
I wandered through bookstores,
I came to Rimbaud’s manteau and Lorca’s abrigo.
I had my first encounter with the moment and eternity.
I played baseball, wore a catcher’s mask,
I wanted to look like Puchinello.
From my notebook’s discarded pages
I made myself a Commedia dell’arte overcoat,
sestina collar. My Italian always sounds,
I’m told, as if I’m delivering
Lorenzo Da Ponte’s recitative.
I could play a tragic, comic, sadistic clown,
throw out runners trying to steal second base.
I wrote a love poem only my lover could understand.
I could write a single word that I repeat
over and over until it becomes a poem “The Overcoat.”
A free man, I wanted to farm verse, learn how to praise.
I pushed, pulled the plow, let donkeys
and horses play, I dressed for dinner,
I wore an overcoat of feathers, fish scales,
mouse and grisly bear fur, a white tie.
I never stood naked in the snow in a death camp,
my overcoat on its way to Berlin.
Like clubfooted Byron, I would refuse to walk
over the overcoat that pudgy Stendhal threw
on street ice in front of the Scala.
I will not discuss the earth’s overcoat, top soil.
My final overcoat will not be a shawl.
I’ll end with sleepwalker’s talk,
“Côte d’Azur, dovecotes, coterie.”
I reach out toward living ladies and gentlemen
having love affairs with their dead lovers.