Poetry Growing Up

for Nancy Levine and Bill Slaughter

When you were young
didn’t you ever want to be

William Carlos Williams
without going through med school?

Didn’t you ever want to be Rimbaud
without getting shot by Verlaine?

Didn’t you ever want to be Dylan
without going to Juarez

and getting lost in the rain?

Sometimes, but mostly
I just wanted

to be Wallace Stevens,
get an insurance license,

write with elegance,
and eat oranges

in a sunny chair.
Oranges Lorca and I,

together by the balustrades,
would peel apart

and share.

–April 26, 2017