This is a poem I want to remember by heart: John Logan's "Three Moves." It will appear in an anthology of un-anthologized poetry that will come out soon from University of Illinois Press, and I wrote an intro about Logan, who I suppose was a drunk. He was the first poet I ever saw give a reading, so his work is resonant for me.



I am very interested in the teeter-totter of the historical record, and why some (few) writers will flop into the lot of what will be remembered forever, while everybody else flops into the dustbin--what forces conspire to allow the few to join the record? I have a hunch it depends on which writers anticipate the aesthetic of the era to follow...but my theories are unformed, stay turned. Logan will be forgotten, I assume. But he did write this one great poem (which actually does turn up in a few anthologies.)



THREE MOVES



Three moves in six months and I remain

the same.

Two homes made two friends.

The third leaves me with myself again.

(We hardly speak.)

Here I am with tame ducks

and my neighbors' boats,

only this electric heat

against the April damp.

I have a friend named Frank--

the only one who ever dares to call

and ask me "How's your soul?"

I hadn't thought about it for a while,

and was ashamed to say I didn't know.

I have no priest for now.

Who

will forgive me then. Will you?

Tame birds and my neighbors' boats.

The ducks honk about the floats...

They walk dead drunk onto the land and grounds,

iridescent blue and black and green and brown.

They live on swill

our aged houseboats spill.

But still they are beautiful.

Look! The duck with the unlikely beak

has stopped to pick

and pull

at the potted daffodil.

Then again they sway home

to dream

bright gardens of fish in the early night.

Oh these ducks are all right.

They will survive.

But I am sorry I do not often see them climb

Poor sons-of-bitching ducks.

You're all fucked up.

What do you do that for?

Why don't you hover near the sun anymore?

Afraid you'll melt?

These foolish ducks lack a sense of guilt,

and so all their multi-thousand-mile range

is too short for the hope of change.