July 10 by David Lehman
The sky was a midnight blue velvet cloth draping a birdcage and no moon but the breeze was whistling and the sound of a car on Valentine Place was the rush of a waterfall on the phone in New York City and that's when the muse turned up with curly brown locks she was a poet, too, and wanted me to give her an assignment she was willing to trade fifteen minutes of inspiration in return for a phone call from Frank O'Hara in heaven sipping espresso and Irish whiskey and then a morning swim we had so much energy those days we needed to burn some up before we could paint
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