A visit from The Healing Muse: 'The Poem That I Will Be Remembered For'

Deirdre Neilen, PhD: Sometimes people think poets must be such serious souls, working endlessly to craft the perfect line, no time for fun, but Syracuse poet Joan Cofrancesco, who has recently retired, shows us the exuberance and the delight that can come from following the poetic muse. Here is "The Poem That I Will be Remembered For":

My best poem will have ocean

right in the middle of it, ocean so cold and deep

with life my friend will leave behind

his scuba outfit and tell me, "Wear this when you

go in." My best poem

will have night in it, too, and all the stars

in the Eastern sky, and this immense body

of water shining for miles under a new moon.

My best poem will have a jacuzzi

and a shower for itself, skylights,

a phone by the faucet,

a soapdish made from a clamshell

picked from the beach an hour before breakfast.

There will be waves breaking in my best poem;

and a beach where ocean-soaked

shellfish will rise up, consuming one another.

Oh, my best poem will throw tides!

But there won't be any waterglasses in my best poem.

I'll take up drinking from the bottle.