By the American Shore by Robert Kelly

I want to find a house

I have never lived in

on a beach not frequently

visited. I want a wave

that never crested before,

I want a door

entered only by people

who dont understand me

and I dont understand.

The wallpaper should be green

and the fireplace burn coal.

The women on sofas cross

their legs at the angle and go

in summer to mountain relatives.

The men have little to say

Give me a glass of water

from that clean sink and one

slice of tomato from the fridge

and turn down the Shaker quilt.

Then then I will have lived.

Stamford

From “Not This Island Music” (Black Sparrow: $20, hardcover; $9, paperback; 184 pp.). Kelly, author of many volumes of poetry, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for poetry with his 1979 “Kill the Messenger Who Brings Bad News.” This newest volume opens with a note to the reader: “My dear, my favorite person, for you all my life is work and all my work is play and you can read me or look away. Such power you have, to comand me so, and such beauty, that to you I would over and over pour out everything I think, everything I can hear, everything I hear the words whisper, every sound I can steal. Truly you are my mother, for who else could I talk to in such confidence of being well heard? All the beauty I know is what I find in you, or let you find. You are my father and my love and my child, and I am nothing without you.” 1987, Robert Kelly, by permission.