The poet Donald Rev
ell once read this poem of mine, and told me it was “a perfect little poem.” He didn’t elucidate, and I really don’t know what he meant by this. I wasn’t even sure it was a compliment. Perfect is not always so, as it can mean utterly conventionally perfect. Whatever — said poem was written when I was reluctantly leaving one man while being violently pursued by another. Said pursuant was the writer Andrew Huebner, left, and, as I suspected from the beginning, I ended up not with him or the man I left, but alone — at least for some years. Proving, I guess, that I was right to feel as I felt in the following:
Jersey Shore
Maybe it is time for me to love a body
without hope of keeping it,
to take your heavy soft solid kiss
and give it back —
to let you wander off, like another brother —
indifferent yet tied.
It’s only moments that I’m after now,
you telling me to Look at you
as I am somewhere between pleasure and grief.
“I am in despair,” I say,
getting in your car —
Before us the bright April ocean.
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Interestingly -on another point entirely — the last time I remember seeing Drew he was waking across 14th Street, wearing a black t-shirt festooned with an American flag.
Drew was from New Jersey/Pennsylvania, which meant a lot to him, while I had little knowledge of my ancestry.
It turns out, I found out not long after Drew, and while living in New Zealand for eight years — my great-great-great Grandfather Joseph Wareham was also from New Jersey/Pennsylvania. He fought in the U.S. Civil War, was injured in battle of Pensacola, and followed on to New Zealand in the 1840s, looking for gold.