PLAGIARISM  OR  CANIBALISM?

I have digested my favorite poets:
Levertov, Bishop, Frost,
Cairns, Dickinson, Jeffers,
Updike, Stevens, Oliver,

Berry, Eliot, Sandburg,

Seferis, Heaney, Rumi,
and obviously oodels of others….
as well as Second Isaiah, sections of Ezekiel,
some Psalms and some prayers.

Many of their particulars fed my soul.
Tennyson was right when he wrote
in his poem, “Ulysses,”
“I am part of all that I have met.”

Being single, I have a peculiar pattern
of going to bed with a book of poems,
swallowing one or two poems
like the Advicor pill and aspirin
I’m prescribed to take at bedtime.
Two pills – two poems –
and I’m off to sleep.

Ooops … should I mention a complication?
Some nights there is that one poem
that keeps me awake all night –
as the exaggeration goes –
but it keeps repeating on me –
till it becomes me

in the belly of my mind,

in the belly of the dark night.

© Andy Costello, Reflections, 2009

Here are the full names of the poets mentioned above:

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)

Mary Oliver (1935- )

John Updike (1932-2009)

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

Robert Frost ( 1874-1963)

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Denise Levertov (1923-1939)

Seamus Heaney (1939 - )

Scott Cairns (1954- )

Rumi or Mawlana Jalal ad-Din

Muhammad Balkhi (1209-1273)

Wendell Berry ( 1934 - )

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

Wallace Stevens (1879- 1955)

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Geroge Seferis ( 1900-1971)