YOU BEST WRITE IT DOWN, LEST YOU LOSE

by DIANE SEUSS

your mind, and I’ve seen
it done, the best
minds lost and gone
unfound,

the best minds lost
and gone unsung,

I’ve seen it, the best
minds gone as soft
as sticky buns, and not
the kind with nuts,

so “Write it!” to quote
Bishop, who likewise

lost it, lest you, too, lose
it to the prosaic
institution of the lost
and found

department: lost
keys, minds, wheels,

barrows, whole
boxes of Depends, whole
generations of lost
chickens, the mind’s sad,

unglazed, unwritten
exhibition.

NATURE SINGS IN A MINOR

by DIANE SEUSS

key, melancholy,
mourning
doves, wind in a stand

of cattails, the low of a lone
cow,

warped song of the ice-
cream man’s seductions,
eavesdropped

notes of “Jesus

Loves Me” exuding

from the cement blocks
of the Church
of God,

the stone

sliding

in your pocket
when you run
away from home

or skip school,
the scuff

of ill-fitting thirdhand
shoes, later, rock
and roll,

the kind rooted in blues.

Diane Seuss is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Althea: Poems (Graywolf Press 2027), Modern Poetry (Graywolf Press 2024), which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize. and frank: sonnets (Graywolf Press 2021), the winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Seuss is a member of the Academy of American Poets Board of Chancellors. She was a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, and the recipient of the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She taught as Writer in Residence in the creative writing program at Kalamazoo College for many years. Seuss was raised by a single mother in rural Michigan, which she continues to call home.

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