UNDER A TREE OF THORNS

(for John Pretor Gilbert)

Under a tree of thorns in Bell Buckle
Halfway to Baldy, I sit watching my friend
Who will die of brain cancer before he is 28.
He reads Gregory Corso's Happy Birthday of Death
To me out loud.

I hang on his rapier like diction,
his passion for words, for language,
for meaning.
In him that mysterious power which calls young men out
To war, to love, to sacrifice was revealed.

In him that knowledge was full blown:
a ten thousand watt halogen lamp
Shining at midnight from the school parking lot
On the gymnasium wall.

John, at 18 you sang "the emptiness of retaliation"
Like one spent from centuries of vendetta.
I miss you and mourn you now 20 years after your death.

Some part of me is sitting with you still
Under the Thorn tree and you,
As you recite Lawrence Ferlingetti to me on a hillside in east tennessee
Are already west of the Golden Gate.
And moving westward still.

April 94