When I grow up I want to be Stanley Kunitz
and wear sneaky tennis shoes wherever I want to wear them
flirt and dance with words so longingly they bloom in everyone’s
garden
where I touch them and they remember me.
I want to be Stanley
getting younger every year, especially
at Dodge telling about his index cards of meaningful, locked-in
circulating energy poems by Yeats Blake Hopkins Hardy that have no date
telling about the pastel portrait about his ever burning
cheek
the lonely growing where he was a living taboo
so we know someone else has felt that way too, but still flowered
into Stanley.
I almost forgot, I want to sit next to Maxine Kumin on the poetry shelf.
Stanley, this I promise, when I grow up to be you, I will
celebrate your birthday on July 29 every year maybe with Lucille
We will name you Flower and Gift and Poet
Most of all we will call out
“Beloved “
for Stanley Jasspon Kunitz
Can you see us up on the roof
of the red brick building
at the foot of Green Street
waving to you?
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