When I retrace our footsteps
to Bloomington I recall talking jazz,
the half-forgotten South
in our mouths, the repitlian
brain swollen with manly regrets
left behind, thumbing volumes
inscribed to the dead in used
bookstores, & then rounding
griffins carved into limestone.
The gingkoes dropped fruit
at our feet & an old woman
scooped the smelly medicine
into a red plastic bucket,
laughing. We walked across
the green reciting Hayden,
& I still believe those hours
we could see through stone.
I don't remember the girls
in summer dresses strollng
out of the movie on Kirkwood,
but in the Runcible Spoon
sniffing the air, Cat Stevens
on a speaker, we tried to buy
back our souls with reveries
& coffee, the scent of bathos
on our scuffed shoes.
-- for Christopher Gilbert
