On Reading Alden Nowlan

Your book waited for me thirty-eight years
In the Indianapolis public library
No one had ever lifted it from the shelf
Or opened its cover
So stiff was its binding

And to me the astonishing thing is not
That no one reads
Not that great poets cannot be anthologized
Because they are Canadian
And so the next generation will never remember them

But that money existed to publish and print
The work of your life
That money was there to preserve your words
Pressed into paper in 1970
Kept in air conditioned comfort for thirty-eight years
Until I could discover you
To me this is an enduring astonishment.

For what interest could money have in you?
You, who hated the rich and their richness
Who growled at famous poets
Who would have kicked Robert Bly in the nuts
To facilitate his investigation into the nature of masculinity.

Look, there is what is real and what is fake, you said.