For our being together in school,
I dared to bring a couple of school poems.
"A Gesture Toward an Unsound Renaissance."
There was the slow girl in art class,
less able to say where our lessons led.
We learned so fast, she could not follow us.
But at the door, each day, I looked back
at her rich distress, knowing almost enough
to find a better art inside the lesson.
And then, late at night, when the whole town was alone,
the current below the rumbly bridge at Main Street
would go an extra swirl and gurgle once by the pilings.
And at my desk at home or when our house opened above my bed
toward the stars, I would hear that one, intended,
lonely sound, the signature of the day,
the ratchet of time taking me toward here, now.
And this looked back through that door that always closes.