I WANT TO WRITE ABOUT WHAT I DON’T KNOW

I want to write about what I don’t know.
I want to write a sequence of sonnets, for instance,
on the mysteries of the mind, one for each mystery or so.

I want to write about what I don’t know.
On botany, macroeconomics, quantum gravity,
I want to compose elaborately complex odes.

I want to write about what I don’t know.
The secret language of deaf Babylonians, let’s say,
or how nocturnal plants use moonlight to grow.

I want to write about what I don’t know.
An epic about my heroic great ancestral father
and how he found my great ancestral mother in the Russian snow.

I want to write about what I’ll never know.
What will the world be like in a thousand years?
Will there still be birds called eagle, puffin, hawk, flamingo?

*

SHORTCUTS

“Remember, there are no shortcuts,”
he used to say. He was my father,
and he used to say that a lot. I think
he said that more than he said anything.
I knew what he meant. He didn’t need
to spell it out. So, of course, I took all
the shortcuts I could find. The shortcut
to the ball field. The shortcut to the
candy store. The shortcut to the deli.
The shortcut to the pizza place. The
shortcut to the junior high school.
The shortcut to the high school. The
shortcut to the B average in high
school. The shortcut to the college
across town. The shortcut to dropping
out. The shortcut to the woman I
married. The shortcut to becoming
a poet. I never told him he was right.

*

Professor Emeritus of English at SUNY Orange, J.R. Solonche has published poetry in more than 500 magazines, journals, and anthologies since the early 70s, including The New Criterion, The New York Times, The American Scholar, The Progressive, Poetry Northwest, Salmagundi, The Literary Review, The Sun, The American Journal of Poetry, Poet Lore, Poetry East, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and Free Verse. He is the author of Beautiful Day (Deerbrook Editions), Won’t Be Long (Deerbrook Editions), Heart’s Content (Five Oaks Press), Invisible (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize by Five Oaks Press), The Black Birch (Kelsay Books), I, Emily Dickinson & Other Found Poems (Deerbrook Editions), In Short Order (Kelsay Books), Tomorrow, Today and Yesterday (Deerbrook Editions), True Enough (Dos Madres Press), The Jewish Dancing Master (Ravenna Press), If You Should See Me Walking on the Road (Kelsay Books), In a Public Place (Dos Madres Press), To Say the Least (Dos Madres Press), The Time of Your Life (Adelaide Books), The Porch Poems (Deerbrook Editions , 2020 Shelf Unbound Notable Indie Book), Enjoy Yourself (Serving House Books), Piano Music (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize by Serving House Books), For All I Know (Kelsay Books), A Guide of the Perplexed (Serving House Books), The Moon Is the Capital of the World (WordTech Communications), Years Later (Adelaide Books), The Dust (Dos Madres Press), Selected Poems 2002-2021 (nominated for the National Book Award by Serving House Books), and coauthor with his wife Joan I. Siegel of Peach Girl:Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). He lives in the Hudson Valley.