BERRYMAN'S LETTERS

Junk mail
lost for years
Dear John in a funk
and suicide letters
in the old trunk
of his betters
lost forever.

Life sweet cheated you
capturing and arranging
cameo things
clumsily spaced
and frosted in a music box
by narratives
in your poetry's paradox
of sickness unto guilt
he talks and talks
from mind racing tapes
as snow pills detox
while waves from a legend
erased by Styx and stones
from Berryman
to Cape Girardeau spill
on now effaced shore rocks.