N a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 0

RICHARD WILMARTH

Note

Helen, my older sister

Sent me an optimistic

Card with a note

That said after all

Of this is over

I’ll feel like

40 again

too bad

that has now become

impossible.

[From do not remove: selected poems from Richard Wilmarth’s last notebooks, Arnold W. Peterson, editor, 2009, unpublished. Printed by permission of Arnold W. Peterson. Richard Wilmarth (1949-2003), was born in Fall River, Massachusetts. A high school dropout, he received an M.F.A in Writing and Poetics from Naropa in 1994. A prolific poet and correspondent, his Dead Metaphor Press published a number of important Postbeat poet texts. These final poems were written at the end of his life while dying of cancer––ed.]