Who is John Updike?

My control key has stopped working
I think there’s something stuck beneath it -
A stale crumb from a sandwich crust,
A baby cockroach, fatally curious about
the whirr contraption
A nail clipping
A tiny piece of carrot
A hardened ball of dust -
I’m thinking of John Updike.
He’s dead now and that is how I know about him.
Sure I’ve heard of him before –
“Updike writes books” and “Updike says lovely things,”
“Some of the things he says may even be true” – shalalalalala.
But, like Picasso – it took the passing of a soul.

I’ve always felt bad for
posthumously famous people.
Fame – it comes so rarely –
The famous should last long enough
to enjoy
the misery of utter, personal exposure;
to hear
the sound of anonymity running naked
out the door with a quiet laugh that sounds like *poof!*

If someone had sat me down and said -
Jean – you have to read this guy.
He is that good – you don’t have time?
Make time. He knows things.
I would have done it.
I think I would have done it.

Perhaps then I would understand
What the columnist from the New Yorker
Meant when, upon his death,
commemorated Updike as
“The perfect author to dip into.”

Can I dip into John Updike?
How do I do that?
Do I take my carrot fingers
And slip them in between the pages of
His creamy, literary dressing?
Must I dip or can I dunk or can I drown
Into this author, can I immerse myself
In anything at all – or is he a
La-dee-da kind of guy
who chameleonizes himself
like myself, who stands in front
Of a field and turns into a
Perfectly symmetrical, sun-burnt flower?

Now that he's dead
and I’ve read a few of his things,
I feel like I know this guy pretty well.
If I could,
I would have him over for tea, he and his
76-year-old grin that takes his face muscles
– all of them – and some of his
neck muscles too -
And I would say
“Now John, tell me what it means to be
part of the Protestant middle class,”
Or "John darling, shall we go to the races next week?"
Or “John Updike, where are you now?”