A Poem about Hemingway....

I gave a friend of mine this picture of Ernest Hemingway in Key West. He looks so young and happy and prolific, doesn't he?

Photo of Hemingway in Key West, 1928

There are things I want to tell you but

even in my imagination

we wouldn’t talk at a party.

I’d view you from some corner like

a new map without the pleasure

of a fold.

I might say
these landlocked days

we sit in an empty rowboat
going nowhere

or

the world is a face cracked in half

or

my father fought in the Six Day War

but says real men bake bread at dawn

in Throggs Neck.

                                          

You might say,

a baker knows what a soldier doesn’t:

what you touch soon crumbles.

Everything sweet is measured in spoons,                             

then dissolves.

Tall man with brown hands:

come watch the tall ships

drift the horizon

and drink whiskey with me.

We don’t have to speak at all.