O Raptor

	i.m. Kenneth Burke (1897 ––1995)

Phil Fried

One weekend, thirty years ago, at Stony
Brook, the wild-eyed chatterer Kenneth Burke
flapped in a classroom like a trapped falcon
as feathered with ideas he hurtled into
wall after wall, more walls than we’d ever imagined,

while scores of us, hallooing teachers and students,
circled beneath him, flailing at the open
window crying, There, you can fly out there . . .
Not hearing or listening, he declared between
collisions that he often awakened with words,

words streaming through his brain, Bang! So many
cars in Williams’s poems because New Jersey’s
the traffic state, the entrance to everywhere, Bang!
This should be easier, we pleaded, eyes
widening, just a room with chairs, a window . . .

At last we inveigled him into a guest eyrie
pretending he was a bird wounded with time
- it was late, he was near 80 - and needed rest
but his beak kept sipping Scotch and tearing at questions,
Ouch! Our craniums. Is there a sociologist

in the house, he needs more meat, says reading the
    “Ancient
Mariner” - my wrist has the imprint of his sinewy
claw that held me - it got so he could tell
when the ship needed a fix. But we, poor Persons
from Porlock, were looking for a way out . . .

You left this “feather”: I can’t see a sign saying Enterprise
Auto Rental and not wince as your strutted
wings batter sheetrock. No exit through Opportunity’s
fabled window. To paraphrase what the blues
man sings, we’ll never get out of these words alive.