nearer you

do you still yet find yourself
on a walk down that near lane
eclipsed by the breathing wood

drawn like we once were
by the worn latch of the cabin door
that led onto aged pine boards

into familiar gray-lit chambers
induced as blood is
into the vessel of life

and do you still yet find yourself
treading among a
breeze of souls

impelled toward
a day's worth of
languid summer business

of late breakfasts
of cool swims
of play-in-pines

we boys were gone
to an extravagant leisure
in a harmonic time

seeing God's reflection
in the mirror shards of
mr. hogan's watery garden

while across the way we
heard old mrs. whitney
flirting with all her visitors

and within this small
frame of our world
we were naked to

the sun and the moon
that both burnished
us equally

and there was no difference
between us that meant
anything important

we were elevated
as it were and were
of one coil

but these days deceived us
our innocence laid on a bier
made from the bones of brutes

poor from ignorance
who profited most
from the selling of fears

from the pew and the
pulpit they preyed
and summer was devoured

those days
were rolled up
and her windows shuttered

and the curiosities
of boys muted by
the lash of elders' tongues

we were taught
well to master the
provinces of passion

to keep our heads bowed and
quiet the inquiries that might
yield us to enlightenment

at once we were open
boys floating on a loft
of nature's mysteries

tethered as we were
by nothing more than
our imaginations

all brought to quarrel
by an injection of
terrors and eternal fires

i knew you were you
before you told me
years later

but didn't whisper the
name for it for fear
of impoverishing you

i knew you were not
being you before you
knew it yourself

but didn't put tongue
to it for fear of the
shadow it might cast on me

and so we two boys
who once danced closely
did so less closely now and

learned not to say
what was meant to be
said but bridled by pain

and allowing the world
to tell us that you
were no man if you were that

often in the course
of having grown up
i wandered and wondered

how our unfettered
friendship got filled up
and guilt overspread it

how i could possibly
say i loved you without
the specter of a crucible

between the cross
and the shadow
of misinterpretation

and how i became
a man who gave either
any weight at all

when really the only
true governing laws
are love and passion

and the only minister
ought be that which
drives a man toward art

because then and
only then a man allows
himself to be

and what is a child's
search for meaning is
not lost

to the patronizing peddler
of ancient words whose
true message has been fouled

and had i known
of the farce of it
all i would tell you

was that i loved you
and not fear the pinch
and the poke

of the hate-lovers and
the vile nor would i
succumb to my own

preposterous ghosts
who played with
the mind of a man drugged

and i would have been
nearer you and
perhaps even a small savior

and perhaps not learn
of your death in a foreign
bed alone by the interstate

and had i known that what we shared
as youth among mr. hogan
and mrs. whitney's heavenly harbors

was the truest pastoral
of god's love on earth
i would preach it full

and embrace my
friend and announce you
to this world

'here is a man!'
'here is a man!'
'here is a man!'