Two Poems by Wayne Mason

Thinking About Philip Levine

Midnight at work thinking
about Philip Levine and how
the factories are a little more
hopeless without him here

I wish I could have met him
to tell him his poems kept
me sane, his words got me
through many cruel nights

I would have told him that
he gave me hope… not that
I would ever be a laureate but
that I could survive unbroken

That because of him I could
find beauty amid the suffering
truth beyond bleak smokestacks
music in the hum of machinery

I’d tell him that I kept his letter
framed above my desk, and that
his kind words to a hungry poet
meant more than any publication

Not too long before he passed
he gave a reading close by but I
had to work instead, and I’m sure
he would have likely understood

____________

3am Soundtracks

At 3 am in this old factory when
it’s all too much to bear and the
darkness of night consumes me
like a lifeless sprawling black hole

Sometimes words can’t capture
the weariness of these bleak hours

But bleeding through the solitude
is the soft hum of machinery and
a forklift moaning, in the distance
the sound of tired gravelly voices

While Coltrane wails on the radio
saying more than any poem could