You are running, delighted, up the rough-made
laneway to the lake where you are sailor, eel-fisher, 
pilot; it’s after-school time, you are free-bird, lark
and soaring; turf-banks, and the rickety green door
into the wood-shed; on the unsafe, rough-plank
boat you have built, you will raise a sheet-sail
to explore the reeds and small, boggy inlets,
sweet breezes accompanying, silence, your own
sensual pleasures, and high anticipation; 
                                                                        then
on your way, you meet the old man, poet prophet, 
coming down the laneway, bearded, a little stooped, 
back from the distinguished Fellowship he has held, 
there by the shores of Lake Michigan, its flotillas
of swift-moving yachts, its waters stretching away
to far horizons;
                                    you meet, alter and aliud, 
your Other and Stranger; you meet where age-old
boglands and bright campus together have fallen still
as in a painting, and suddenly, all you have known
is a nothingness, a nowhere, a now, an always;
a moment of silence falling away from the old
rickety door that opens out of, and into, eternity.