Dear Dick, Professor Eberhart

by Gerard Malanga

How do I address thee in the golden hour,
in the afterlight
as my day wanes,
as night comes on with its sometimes nasty dreams,
its simple observations,
its cruel realities, its sadnesses.
I was in my high school then.
My last year
I had no idea
that I’d be reaching for your satchel after class
what I’d been taught rightfully,
as we paced it to the nearest outdoor café in far–flung Cincinnati.
A quiet gesture, nonetheless.
Your words would shake me as your senses shook
at the sight of change, so senseless, so exclamatory.+
A groundhog’s death is what you made me see.
What little that remains
when last you saw the bits of hair,
a twig or two
tangled in the wetted grass.
Time gains in meaning when least observed
in how a poem remembers it
in spite of us & through a sunlit trembling, a coalescence,
if there be such a word . . . & so there is.