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'BOUND AWAY' I
"I am bound away,
'cross the wide Missouri."
Bound away,
past dark-green Bronx golf course nights,
past Broadway El-blue spark-subway lights,
with Maddy lying there in my arms,
our lives stretching out before us,
bound away,
past the Sixties with its ragged peaks of hope,
past war-loneliness-days-late nights-hard to cope,
past tenement pad dreaming-scheming-new worlds
crashing-cops bashing-lost in love-lost in revolution,
bound away,
past college-Bohemian poetry-Paisano wine,
past classes-epiphanies-dope-Motown music-“So Fine!”,
exaltations-Greek diner revelations-a golden dog named Huddy,
past Eddy St.-past lthaca-the scary voyage homeward,
bound away,
past wild history streets-naked confrontations,
past chants-rants-dungaree pants-hell-fire damnations,
three million die-one more Nixon lie-Allende dead-Presente!-
no closer now, drifting by-and yeah, we’re getting older.
bound away,
past births-kids-the baseball-soccer games that followed,
past sleepless nights-the hugs-the fights-the fears in which I wallowed,
Ethan-Jamie-such little boys-and Sandy, with love entangled,
one day-grown-gone!-I looked around-all this a dream? I wondered,
bound away,
past work-brown hair-past teaching-the classrooms that I lived in,
past agitations-preparations-the million causes I got swept up in,
in my kayak-now moving on-to shores I’ve never heard of,
paddling hard-like subway cars-worlds rushing back behind you.
March 31, 2007