This world so 
golden so un- 
reachable this 

If a man is his desire 
if a man is his desire 
if a man is his desire 

Your “yet-to-be-dismantled” elms are few,
and by the time you read this may be gone.
In my own childhood we had one or two

Lateness is all that shimmers in the leaves,
that trembles in the bending grass,
that glistens on the berries on the vine.

He was middle-aged which 
means that the mixture of 
death and life in him was 

the train has left the 
station you can’t take it. 
Once the promise has been 

When cloud cover com- 
plicates the crossing 
all we can do is look 

If we could see the lake someday without
the heaviness the clouds are always casting
in pewter ridges, would there be a doubt

It isn’t worth our while to fret about
our excellence or impotence in art.
I would have liked to be wilder, bolder,

I take the dusty yearbook off the shelf
and scan the fledgling, mostly white, male faces:
a foreign country, but the aging self