Here’s my contribution to the memory of Monday. For more, read Dan Wilcox’s Birthday Poem, 2009 and his write-up of the event.
Robby Burns’s Hat
Crusty snow beneath our boots
as we watch a limber young poet
scamper atop the McPherson Legacy.
Once settled between Robby’s legs,
he takes the beret — the same one
they used last year —
and balances it on top of Robby’s head.
The last time, it was up there a week before
a less young, but no less limber, poet
found the beret at the base of the Legacy
and rescued it from oblivion, restoring
the cap to its place of honor twelve months later.
And so it goes, year after year, in honor
of the man who started it all, and who
made the trail through the snow that we follow.
[…] Following the featured reading, a half dozen poets read a couple poems each. Dan Wilcox read a wonderful piece about wanting to read love poems to someone … a poet whose name I didn’t catch (but who I always see at the library where he works) read a funny poem about heaven as a gated community … and performance poet A.C. Everson recited a piece about what a bastard Cupid is. I read two recent pieces, “Luxury Hotel” and “Robby Burns’s Hat.” […]