ALMA MATER

As I walk. march-step, down the aisles of the universe

At my 25th reunion, noting who is bald, who fat,

Whose dark circles betray multiple bouts of psychosis,

Who has multiple sclerosis, or has lost a limb,

I reach the altar where my mother stands in flame-

Crimson Harvard doctor's gown holding a sun-burst monstrance.

I refuse the chalice. And swear on my three books of poems

To create, between fifty and sixty, my own myth

Of a god, my own myth of a goddess.

That's all, folks.