Each play in the 2009 Series
can be cross-indexed to Rip Van Winkle.
Those big hits by Hideki Matsui
were still falling asleep to history.
The falling maples leaves, Dame Van Winkle,
brings us back to our freshman year, never
quite dressed right for the coming cold, never
stopping to tour the nutmeg factory.
I hate Halloween. The last time I barked
at my students I was in a costume.
Downtown, cold, pecking my phone, miserable
in my wet Joe DiMaggio outfit.
Congratulations, Doc, you may have won
“the successful evasion of adulthood”.
Fetterley, Judith. The Resisting Reader:
Indiana University Press. 1978
This poem “Washington Irving.” originally appeared in Science & Canadian Literature. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 221 (Summer 2014): 73.
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