)Twin Rainbows(

Again, the world seems to be mad and beat:
All I can hear are the whispers of pain
And the sunrise is pink fog in the street.

There's a broken crucifix at my feet.
The storm was dismissed by a hurricane.
Again, the world seems to be mad and beat.

I saw a black crow flying sixty feet
Into the dawn; he didn't stop to explain.
And the sunrise is pink fog in the street.

The twin rainbows in the night sky taste sweet,
But like tattered sheets they will wash away.
Again, the world seems to be mad and beat.

You look like all the people I could meet,
But you left your hat behind all the same
And the sunrise is pink fog in the street.

"My escape," you say sadly, "must be fleet."
A handshake, then the bus takes you away.
Again, the world seems to be mad and beat
And the sunrise is pink fog in the street.10.May.1978This was written during my brief stay (about 2-3 months) in Princeton, NJ. Rusty had come to visit us, and things had gotten decidedly stranger. We all loved Rusty, but five guys crammed into a two-bedroom apartment gets a little stressful. Plus, Rusty was going through a major depression.

Pink Fog. One of the interesting weather conditions were these pink clouds which would appear in the sky at various times during the day, then dissipate. My personal theory is they were smog blowing in from New Brunswick or own of the near-by factory towns.

The hat. Rusty had a great black hat, similar to the fedora I obtained several years later. The guys all fussed over it, and we took turns wearing it. We thought of as a magic hat, because each of us looked quite dapper when wearing it. As Rusty was leaving our apartment, he set the hat on the dining table with a note: "Share the hat."

The bus. For some reason, I was the only one who woke up as Rusty was getting ready to leave. Rusty was adamant that we not wake anyone, so I was the only one to see him off. Hopefully, the poem reflects Rusty's sadness as much as it does my own.

Ironically, the poem which I'm about to post next, which will appear above this entry, is also about fog. Honestly, this wasn't planned. Yesterday began with a lovely low-lying fog, visibility reportedly at a quarter of a mile. I carried a couple of lines with me through the day, and the poem you'll see above reflects that.

Quite a difference between the poems, aside from a romantic fascination with fog. This poem is a recognized structure, the villanelle. The new poem is not intentionally a recognized structure, but seems to invent its own structure. Similar to "The Fox," posted on Sunday, the new poem has three-line stanzas with very short lines. As we'll see, the pronoun in the new poem is understood, and I avoided articles and prepositions.