For Donald Mcclean

I thought of you but did not know how to write All the things collecting dust inside a heart Since the walls of boyhood crumbled, and we apart No longer come slushing through the mud tonight. I have kept naseberry seasons with juice sweet As an old man's passion, running down the cheeks I have chewed cold joints of sugarcane, the feet Of old empires grown proud where new mercy seeks My peace. And this different from the day's quiet End when on beds of sand we woke our dreams, met The coming of our hope in the eyes of girls yet Blooming like mangoes in may. Life is today a diet Of choices, and we are doom unless we obey; and I Should obey those inner voices for seasons dry Longing now: and that was when orange rind made The only tears that two young extroverts displayed.