Tonight, as I was driving home, I noticed that someone tagged the stop sign on my street. On the back of the sign it says HD. Maybe some street artist is a great admirer of the modernist poet H.D., and he or she wanted the world to know about her.

Or maybe it was the ghost of H.D. Maybe she’s working on a new concept book: poems about street signs. In fact, I bet one of her upcoming poems reads like this:

Stop sign, harsh stop sign
marred and with stint of aluminum
meagred metal, thin,
sparse of life,

more precious
than a yield sign
single on a pole–
you are caught in the street.

Stunted, with eight sides,
you are set in the ground,
you are sturdy
in your command
that slows down the world.

Can the stop sign
be more beautiful than when
it’s illuminated by moonlight?

I’m keeping my eyes open for the other poets and where they’ll be leaving their mark. WCW on fire engines, TS on spoons, EE on chimneys, etc.

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