Classic Poem

I shut my eyes and a boy blinks
his tart smoke tear through my lashes
where he goes by bonfire and street light
scuffing up yellow leaves and ashes.

He goes — how simply. Mystery,
like their polarity to birds,
looks out of him. Question him, you
can't yet touch him with words.

His images are muscular
like a dog's, dozing; now they ache
their autumnal ritual of football
played through the early dark — that break

into the open, running, running
to the white end-zone of the year,
star-balanced and wind-cut, self-sprung
from shock and tangle ... There was sheer

being of bounding buck, owl
wafting, wolf ... Can you hear me? ... Boy,
Boy, till you're bagged and mounted in
the Beautiful, enjoy, enjoy!











By permission of the author.