The Ascension

I’d be a poet if

it weren’t for other poets.

Twelve of them

orbiting the trunk

of a walnut tree, bemoaning

there’s no fruit;

craning up their neck

like some egret,

then scribbling in “regret”—

as if none have ever thought

of that before.

6 of them will note

they see it lean—

ready to deem it Pisa.

The other half-

dozen focusing on the

bark, incising in

initials—from some latent,

schoolyard love—

or cleverly inserting something

about a dachshund, how its bite is

worse than its—

none of which will matter

as the work crews have arrived

to axe it down. It will be

another poem of loss.

All will lament the rings.

Compare them to some

circle-metaphor. How it doesn’t

have a place of start & stop,

riffing every

Mahayana monk

they’ve ever heard.

They’ll cheap-

out with their dauby

Paper Mates

(cheep—get it?),

wait for the mama bird

to lift the same old tired

psalm she always does.

I’d rather sleep through dawn

then write of wings; cringing

when they post their magnum

opus. I’ll pass them

at the pub some afternoon,

watch them toast themselves, 

each one yet another

Dylan Thomas,

Kerouac 2.0,

or Edna St. Vincent Millay—

yes, how can you go wrong

with a name like that?

Thinking all the greats

were senseless, loutish drunks—

it comes with the

territory—and that the world

will someday fawn

upon their genius misconstrued;

knowing the moribund

spawns immortals,

citing an unknown Emily

Dickinson, who even today

still seizes laurels

launched from the hands

of your featherless wood.

Andreas Gripp

March 30, 2026

Edna St. Vincent Millay