Dream, philosophy, of the little
Hudson Valley town of Cold
Spring (there’s an unexpected place)
Where I spent one boyhood summer running
Wild and riding a horse around
A circle but I didn’t know
That the incarnation of Ralph Waldo
Emerson was teaching in the high
School all the while, in the form
Of a bearded man who rhapsodized
To his students about radio waves.
River breezes whipped the pennons
Along the top of the school and
The river was a sentient being.
After I left and the place left all
But my deepest mind, the level where
My blonde hair still hasn’t faded into
Brown, there was a local baby boom
Like an extrabig volley from West Point
And the town built more and more schools
(That now are empty) and a girl named Ruth
Was shot into the mid nineteen fifties
As if from a circus cannon, hating
Her name, but reconciled later,
And she became a clarinetist