Rereading a Disturbing Poem

I inch my way through Randall Jarrell
slowly advancing my bare feet in the tall grass.
It itches my ankles
and blocks out the sun
keeping the ground muddy.
I can see neither trees nor forest
because his poems are thickets
and marshy fields where danger lurks unseen.

In the silence, you must move slowly
or you will be startled by ink-colored corpses,
bombers spelling words in the sky.
Death barely misses me,
but catches the girl in the poem.
A feeling-fog lingers,
confusion and sadness, and I hope
this poem was not based on a true story.
It sounds too real to be fiction:
the little black girl killed,
and the red clay staining her white dress.
Who would think of that, if not the mind of actual events?

Despite a rational hesitation against terrible things,
I am forced to retrace my steps,
to reread the poem,
because I still don't quite understand what happened.

Protecting Pancakes and Hula

I wanted to tear the book from his thick fingers,
protect it from his roaming eyes.
He didn't turn the pages as I did;
one-by-one, stopping at each picture of old Hawaii,
slicing each side of the pineapple
away from its yellow heart.

He flipped pages, half-read captions,
often mis-reading the descriptions.
He criticized as if I had asked his opinion,
as if he were great enough to judge.
He broke my book like a coconut,
spilling every drop of milk
and leaving the rest to rot.

I had shown him "Pancakes and Hula"
because I thought he would appreciate it.
Not all art needs criticism or understanding.
Why does it matter if she took a thousand photos
and sifted through the sand for sea glass?
Or if these are it?
They're still beautiful, and still hers.
And no matter how little you can appreciate,
I still bought a book of her photography
and not yours.