The Smellfungus

The smellfungus among us complains of unpeeled bananas—he doesn’t understand bisecting lines.

He lives in a network of uncluttered pages—waits for the flood and the clutch of the ham-fisted smile.

Read his body language—why don’t you? You haven’t done anything wrong.

I wring my hands of this.

“Now I rest
in a hammock of words, waiting
for the sun to rise again
over the horizon of the page.”

— Linda Pastan / “The Collected Poems”