For Charles Randall Stanfield on 71st His Birthday
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
If suns were smog and smog were suns, if fog
Were clean and bright yet suns’ corona’s dim
Like haar, if deserts’ sun were analogue
To Highland mist, if noonday were a prim
Half moon or slim white crescent, or if stars
Were never nebulae like crabs, or sun
Were always cold like Saturn’s moons with scars
Or pocks, if daytime were no more than pun
On nighttime, starry structures more like lines
Of ripped off black bear fur, if comets streaked
Like vacuums from gods who hate designs,
Then all the cosmos might have been black shrieked.
But actually you came out far above
The universe, black hair and curls—and love.
