Poetry

"If Only We Could Listen Surely" (a testimonial)

If only we could listen surely

Then here’s to Leo*, too long gone—

Who knew what poetry is, who

We thought could use some of

Our schooling to oversee him—

Who bent low to keep the food

Coming because

The words could never stop—

Who listened politely and ignored

Our constructs and numbing flotsam.

You created lines of flow and rupture,

Rapping long before it got a name.

So much for scholars’ delights.

Thirteen years since then, and I’ve

Passed your marker already by three

But still, and this is it, really, why

This now, this now so many years gone and

How you passed almost unnoticed so few

Bothered to honor your resting hulk, and

The why, I suppose, is that fact, that

Actually of my countdown coming along.

You earned the little grub you got grubbing

The hard way…I never could see you there,

A seller of stuff to material minds.

What you really had for us we couldn’t buy

And anyway it was for giving, not for sale

You made me want to meet Amelia, Mrs. Brooks,

To be there, to save Federico from our madness

Smashed against the wall, to assert its foul

Righteousness, oh yes, you knew it in your bones,

Which is why you gathered your clan to cross America,

Welcoming the air of Walt, Allen and Hart, bound in the

Soul and heart, the sound in lines of America,

Flow and rupture, with them, you accused

In the bluster of your full-throated love.

You were always able to see the unseen ones,

The cowering, fearful woman, pushing cart,

Portering the motel in Provincetown, her spirit sister,

Your Amelia, the kind of love so deep it takes

Your voice to dig it to our lives, the kind of love

That put Boppledock in sauce draining wonder in Mass.

It’s why they looked askance at your honoring

Dylan and Federico and Hart and all the others

In your clan, who took the risks and hated the price.

America always has the price, the America you

Showed what love means, who couldn’t care less.

*Leo Connellan, Connecticut poet laureate, 1996-2001