in memoriam M.J.G.

The clock’s so huge you can watch the minute hand
crawl steadily toward three. It’s after one
on a gray and drizzly Sunday afternoon
before Christmas, and all around me stand

handsome young men who look like paradigms
of American youth. Poised, affluent, and clean-
cut in sweaters that read Princeton and Penn,
they chat idly, glancing from time to time

at their luggage, and at the clock; they’re on
their way to Westport, Mahopac, and Rye,
to houses set beneath a still blue sky,
each with its Porsche, its wide and quiet lawn,

its complement of trees—elm, maple, birch—
and to an exurban sense of harmony
synonymous, for them, with home. And me?
I’m going to a Hastings-on-Hudson church

to say farewell to one who should have been,
eighteen years hence, a freshman Ivy Leaguer
heading home for Christmas—bright, slim, eager
to see his parents, waiting for a train.