John Milbury-Steen

The Dead Sage of Tamiment 

The head dishwasher, my boss, stood behind
the hissing dishwashing machine and took the hot
dishes off the endless belt with hands
duly callused from that line of work.
No one else could stand it.  One day he
voiced his pleasure on that day he was

legally dead, having vanished for
seven years without a trace.  He bowed.
The waiters heard and brought a birthday cake
all on fire for his death and there
were hearty congratulations all rung round.
Now his widow-wife was free to marry.

The next day he and I leaned on a rail
fence outside the kitchen to watch the girls
at their tennis class, to see them whirl
and those flirtatious tennis skirts reveal
the stunning panties.  Very instructional!
Every ball they hit was a man's soul.

Suddenly he said, "If you're so smart,
what do you call the grey inside the white?"
He pointed to some bird shit on the fence.
The center of the shit was grey.  I thought
it was about organic chemistry,
a test.  "Verily," quoth he, "my son,"

(he did his solemn truth-imparting bit)
"every part of shit is also shit."

Jenner

Jenner, too, was tempted by the wiles
of innocent looking, nut brown country girls
who came by, strutting, hauling their milk pails,
Sodbury milkmaids, whose arresting smiles
revealed they knew how to be watched by males
like they were being looked at through peepholes.

His scientific self, observing fact,
his thinking self, actually stayed intact,
as he puzzled, everywhere he looked,
Why are you so beautiful?  He racked
his brain to find an answer as he gawked
why so many faces went unpocked.

None of your business, sir, they said, they said,
none of your business, and they laughed aloud.
Their faces were their fortune.  They went nude
under their clothes, as beauty rightly should,
under their clothes were nude, and, gosh, it showed!

Such insolence they had!  Pleasantly booed,
he almost lost his purpose those hot days
watching those girls flirt and brazenly pose.
It was a crisis.  Jenner had to choose
to dally or defeat a dread disease.
Then he saw by factual barns and plows,
theirs was a beauty they had caught from cows.

If I were Jenner seeing Jeannie's pink
and nut brown areas, I still could think.