TWO POEMS FOR BILL SYLVESTER

GENE FRUMKIN




Entrance victims dissolve what can
alternate suggestions within the horseshoe pit.
Otherwise elementary cognates take me back as a child
pitching near the firehouse.  Old Ed Goff still had the
	plausability
of one who picked corn in Iowa crops, now past
in the California town where indulgent surfaces
were supposed to qualify health.  The firemen
hardly consumed what heroism was available.
Later comic angels capsized down
the slide, occupying enormous energy in pratfalls.



Rochambeau.  If that was his name,
scratched his back with the wrong end
of a flyswatter.  He lived with us
for a month, if that.  While
his stolen rib healed
of its vacancy.  The rib wounded us in that
high, natural town.  A porch in summer,
the obsolete talk under a single star
reliving an instant we couldn't imagine.