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+ 1ST POEMS: The Fiftieth Anniversary Of Monday, October Thirteenth, Nineteen Seventy-Five; Sonnet With Envoi
I thank YOU, LORD, for the half century
of ambition to write a bit of Poetry:
all of five decades, all those years since then,
although it seems like just yesterday.
I told my parents at the evening meal
and shocked prejudice was all they had to say:
that it led to Homosexuality,
political subversion, with long hair,
faded, bell-bottom jeans and dirty bare
feet (and the very thought made their blood congeal;
I dared not tell them that one of the five
conditions was already present to thrive).
The rest of dinner passed in awkward silence---
the percolation of their verbal violence.
ENVOI:
Earlier, I prayed that my soul should align
with the hundred forty-third psalm's verse nine.*
The desire was entirely, wholly mine
and the parents, as usual, fearful with dread
that their son might become a "wayward homo who loves men."
But God's own voice had once directed me
to step outside, to His stars: me . . . (soon to be,
first Starwatcher, then evolved to Starward-Led).
