You bring me donuts when I’m poorly—not what the doctor
ordered but they go down smooth and sweet, and I feel
better for your nurture.
It’s a long-time thing. We indulge each other, have done so for years
but now I wonder who would rub my back, bring me treats
and books to read if I lived alone.
Someone pictured Emily Dickinson, most solitary of poets,
in a chaste white dress with buttons down the back, but Emily
knew better, made sure her dresses opened easily in front
with pockets for her poems and pencils.
Her companions were the birds and fields, the friends she deluged
with her letters—no one, I think, who indulged her with donuts
or fastened her hard-to-reach buttons.
I’ll never write like Emily, never match her rhyme and meter,
never equal her imagery, her masterful compression—
so few words to say so much.
My consolation is to read my poems to you over coffee
and donuts.
