Pat kept notebooks in which she wrote writing ideas; story ideas, characters, poems, etc. When she had used one she carefully crossed out the notes she had used. In her 1978 – 1986, notes (some still unused) I found three more poems. Not sure of when they were written.
Untitled (Little prince, I can’t believe…) (1981?)
Little prince, I can’t believe
you came by chance,
genetic happenstance,
the first come – first served mating dance
of egg and sperm.
Your mind that reaches out and grips
your earth-deep, star-far imagining
could have belonged to nowhere else.
You could not have been different.
There is nothing accidental about you.
Untitled (There once was a man …) (1985?)
There once was a man
who said God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If He finds that this tree
continues to be
When there’s no one about in the Quad.
Dear sir: your astonishment’s odd
I am always about in the Quad.
And that’s why the tree
will continue to be.
Since observed by Yours faithfully, God.
Untitled (These weathered walls…) (1986?)
These weathered walls,
silvery and porous as old bones,
still lie unburied.
Between the cracks
their dry voices cry
of being forsaken.
My fore-fathers left them to die
And so I stay,
and join the vigil,
listening for the sound
of iron-shod wheels.
Eric C. Bow 