SOON

                                        A music composed of what you have forgotten.
                                        That will end with my ending.
                                                  – Jack Gilbert (“Cherishing What Isn’t”)

I remember now, that grand epiphany at 18
on the border of Watts and old town pressed together,
writing in my fifty-dollar stall in ‘The Jungle’—

the Doheny Stables, L.A. in the 60s—absorbing it all.
Fuzzy faces and names who will never know
how they shaped a wide-eyed colt, never hear

the music I whisper now breathing. How the dream
seemed so reasonable, as smooth as wooden-handled tools
I can still use—our each faux pas, a forgotten secret

at the heart of every song. Soon there will be no time
for musing, no tinkling bells for the wind to move
in trees. Soon we will have saved it all for more activities.