THANKS

 

Thanks to Michael Cross for finding Thanks at Serendipity for me. It’s an unusual volume; a hardcover book containing just two short poems (“Theresa’s Friends” and “Thanks") written for Theresa Turner, Creeley’s “’mentally retarded’” red-headed Irish housekeeper from childhood. The book contains two illustrations by Timothy Engelland, and was published simultaneously by The Deerfield Press in Massachusetts and The Gallery Press of Ireland in December, 1977. All were signed by Creeley.

Thanks

Here’s to Eddie—
not unsteady
when drunk,
just thoughtful.

Here’s to his mind
can remember
in the blur
his own forgotten line.

Or, too, lest
forgot, him in the traffic
at Cambridge, outside,
lurching, confident.

He told me later,
“I’m Catholic,
I’m queer,
I’m a poet.”

God bless him,
God love him,
I say,
praise him

who saves you time,
saves you money,
takes on the burden
of your own confessions.

And my thanks again
for the cigarettes
he gave me
someone else had left.

I won’t escape
his conversation
but will listen
as I’ve learned to,

and drink
and think again
with this dear man
of the true, the good, the dead.

—KS

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