Wuthering Slights

Wuthering Slights

“Writers were

pathetic people”

—Ted Hughes,

“Wuthering Heights,”

Birthday Letters

It was pretty much—

Over with when we got there

The open moors, gamma rays—

A decomposing, forsaken quarry

Dreadful drab flaking slabs—

Rubble of stone and sheep shit

I was twice as ambitious—

As Emily Bronte among the ruins

I sulked in the moody moors—

It was right up my dark alley

Amidst the rubble & ruins—

Crumbly stonework, door frames

I breathed it all in—

The burnt-out, worn-out remains

All the failed efforts, failed hopes—

A bridge back to stone rubble past

Doing what Emily Brontë did—

Playing the Heathcliff  big goodbye

Letting the moors wind blow—

The heath-grass always restless

Letting Sylvia tell her story—

Her child-idiot’s notion of me

Peering thru her jealous envious—

Gimp-eyed gaze like Bronte’s double