G.K. Blues
By Tim Lynch

The leaves jumped up as I walked by.
The leaves fell wrong when I walked by.
The world’s thumbed all it wants of you, but I –

Ain’t it funny, I’ve read you more today than ever.
Ain’t it a quiet shame, I’m reading more than ever.
Call the sheriff, build a box, something old’s been severed.

Can you read my guts? Something’s full in me.
Are you, haruspex, somewhere in the cave of me?
Cut me open, sleep, Adam-breathe your heresy.

Read the blood, the high twigs snapped.
Read, and study well the snap.
Your great bear is waiting. It bought a map.

Tim Lynch studies at Rutgers in Camden, NJ, where he is poetry editor for Cooper Street, and conducts workshops with young writers in the city. His poems appear in War, Literature and the Arts, HEArt Online, Whirlwind and elsewhere. This poem was written for the late Galway Kinnel.