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		 A Wicker Basket 
  	 
Comes the time when it's later 
and onto your table the headwaiter 
puts the bill, and very soon after 
rings out the sound of lively laughter-- 
 
Picking up change, hands like a walrus, 
and a face like a barndoor's, 
and a head without any apparent size, 
nothing but two eyes-- 
 
So that's you, man, 
or me. I make it as I can, 
I pick up, I go 
faster than they know-- 
 
Out the door, the street like a night, 
any night, and no one in sight, 
but then, well, there she is, 
old friend Liz-- 
 
And she opens the door of her cadillac, 
I step in back, 
and we're gone. 
She turns me on-- 
 
There are very huge stars, man, in the sky, 
and from somewhere very far off someone hands 
me a slice of apple pie, 
with a gob of white, white ice cream on top of it, 
and I eat it-- 
 
Slowly. And while certainly 
they are laughing at me, and all around me is racket 
of these cats not making it, I make it 
 
in my wicker basket. 
 
- Robert Creeley 
		
		
		
		
		
		
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