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Chapel Hill

An Elegy For Jesse Stroud

There is no precipitating event for this elegy. No anniversary. No birthday. No cause whatever, other than personal need. Jesse Stroud lived, struggled, and died. I do not purposefully vilify nor vindicate. Neither do I celebrate. Certainly not regret.

April 1980

Three

He abandoned desire. The flowers grew slowly around the hole in his chest. When his lover sighed, they trembled.

Too Much One Thing, Not Enough Somewhat Else

Release

I cannot write how it was. The world shifted me too fast with each event passing before me, inflicting my nerves with flash-bulb rapidity. I was quietly startled at the fresh novelty. Numb still to the fact I was leaving, disbelieving, an embryo in limbo, sins forgiven, the timelessness suddenly and violently meaning something concrete.

January 1979

Fathers

To let our parents be, to accept them as people, human and therefore imperfect, rather than as gods — that is the challenge.

Grandparents

A print that someone had jabbed holes where the eyes had been, The Secret Garden where the snow-drops bloomed, a pair of tweezers thrust into a hand

Blue

Selected Poems

We Are Doing Now

Too Old To Rock And Roll, Too Young To Die

Mike looked at me quizzically while Greg Wells, another WQDR disc jockey (or “jock,” as they say in the business), delivered this devastating insight: “Well, you know what it is, Dave . . . You’re just getting old.”