The Shameful Profession

For years I tried to conceal from the villagers that I wrote poetry
I didn't want them to know that I was an oddball
I didn't want the young men with beards wearing baseball caps
who come to the liquor store in their pickups to buy sixpacks to
know that I was some kind of sissy
I decided it was prudent to buy the Daily News instead of the Times
at the drugstore
I burned my poem drafts at home before I took the trash to the
dump, kids scavenge around there and the old man who does
the recycling is nosey
I took every precaution
But our town is not an easy place to keep secrets, everybody knows
everybody and they gossip when they're getting their mail at the
post office
Things began to come apart
A young man with long hair and a city accent showed up and
asked in the stores where the poet Laughlin lived
Then a pipe burst and the plumber told people that he saw
thousands of books stacked in the cellar, some of them in
foreign languages
Next day the head of the Volunteer Fire Department came,
pretending to check the wiring
I began to get a bit paranoid; the town trooper is supposed to check
each rural road once a week but he came up our road past my
house three days in succession
The axe fell when somehow a reporter for the country paper heard
the rumors and there was a little item: local poet caught
speeding twice on 272, Motor Vehicles may suspend license
Much has changed in my life now
Nobody has laughed at me in the street (I'm over six feet weight 245
and look pretty fit for my age) but they look at me in a funny way
I don't go to Apple House our grocery store any more because a little
girl with her finger in her noise pointed me out to the check-out
lady and asked her something; now I get my liquor and supplies
in the next towns and order Honeybaked Hams from Virginia
by mail

My life is all different now that they know I write poems.
But if they think they can shame me out of it they're very much
mistaken. I'm not breaking any law
I'll go on with it unless they have me declared a public nuisance
and have me sent to the Institute
I've heard there is a poor old fellow in the Institute who claims
he is Henry Wordsworth Longfellow. He'll understand and
be my friend; we can recite to each other if they won't let us
have paper and pencils.