If I had known you then By Janette Schafer

When you drove through those

hillsides of Westmoreland County

raising hell in the ways only 

an ex-evangelical can—

I’m sure we would have fucked

in my giant boat Bonneville,

the one I named Hoopty,

because I so wanted to be wild—

and at 19, and recently 

excommunicated, it was 

the only way I knew how,

when wildness meant “be opposite.”

You would have loved

William Carlos Williams and I still

would have hated it,

but we would both agree

that you couldn’t get 

to Mary Oliver or Wendell Berry

without him. 

Janette Schafer is a poet, photographer, playwright, and realtor living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She holds an MFA in poetry from Chatham University. She is the author of three collections of poetry and the chief editor of two poetry anthologies. Her writing and photographs have appeared in numerous journals, newspapers, and websites, including Vox Populi, The Missouri Review, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Eunoia Review. She is a winner of the Academy of American Poets Prize.