A Lamentation
Thin, dark hair, agonizing
hazel black eyes, you stood
on the stage of Penn's campus.
The waves of your words
splashed across the room.I was there fifty years ago tuned
to your troubled voice applauding
your poems. You were drifting
with the signs of your pills and spirits.You drifted
because you had no place
between the frenzy and night,
the mockingbird and madness,
—caught in the undertow
of darkness.The awful rowing toward God.
What Matters
In the rude night as I sip my coffee in this city
of once brotherly love, I think of you
and what matters here that is our time.
What we care for is what we leave.
I think of Dvorak and "Goin' Home,"
That song stays with me when I'm alone.
Now I'm with you in these lines
over the plains of America. The waves of our years
beat against us as our children find their wings
and take bits of our lives with them.
May they sit down and watch the snow fall
and ride their sleds into a better world.
