Keats Walking

 

by Winchester Cathedral

down cobblestone paths

and streets, past Westminster

School, the divided river

mechanically leveled to

avoid overflowing,

past uncultivated fields,

low-lying meadows and marsh,

taking the air, writing in-comparable

verses, barely out of his teens,

intimations of immortality,

so many years before posted:

signs: DO NOT FEED

THE FISH, DO NOT SOIL

THE GRASS, DISPOSE OF

LITTER PROPERLY,

signs of a modern age,

warnings left out of modern

watercolors, painted as tourists

walk  alongside the Itchen,

past Spartan monks quarters

of Hospital of St Cross; eventide,

a ghost dance for the dead,

who reside among the living.

 Alan Catlin has been publishing since the seventies; from the mimeos to the Internet. His latest full length book of poems is “Alien Nation.”  He is currently working on a sequel to that book under the working title of, “Beautiful Mutants.”