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One summer, aged 16, I watched -- each night, it seemed -- my
roommate,
A college guy, gather his blanket up, and flashlight,
And leave for his rendezvous with the camp cook--
he never came back before dawn.
Some 40 years later I saw him again for the first time
Since then, in a grocery store, in the checkout line,
A cleric from Lexington, shrunken and small. Bearded even.
And all these years I'd thought of him, if at all, as huge
And encompassing,
Not rabbit-eyed, not fumbling a half-filled brown sack,
dry-lipped, apologetic.
Excerpt from Apologia Pro Vita Sua, poem II
Charles Wright's Black Zodiac (first edition 1997)
roommate,
A college guy, gather his blanket up, and flashlight,
And leave for his rendezvous with the camp cook--
he never came back before dawn.
Some 40 years later I saw him again for the first time
Since then, in a grocery store, in the checkout line,
A cleric from Lexington, shrunken and small. Bearded even.
And all these years I'd thought of him, if at all, as huge
And encompassing,
Not rabbit-eyed, not fumbling a half-filled brown sack,
dry-lipped, apologetic.
Excerpt from Apologia Pro Vita Sua, poem II
Charles Wright's Black Zodiac (first edition 1997)