1.
We spent those days
at a crossing place in time,
and only we
knew what could be,
and what was left
behind.

The prairie wheat blew
gold and soft
on Illinois-planted fields of fall.
Then later on, the whitened snow
lay gentler still
on a campus where we lived and laughed,
and lied.

2.
Who was I then?
Or any of us?
Sometimes, I can't tell, even now,
because I only
thought I knew.
I played the role
and joined approved-of crowds,
but inside
stayed alone.

I met so many folks there,
those who helped me grow
and maybe a few
I'm better off
forgetting.
But I remember them all,
wondering
what might have been
if I had changed
to whom they wanted.
Because I never could.
At length,
with silent disappointment,
I left.

Yet the years betrayed
those heartland days.
They all stayed
stored away within.
Vagrant thoughts still recollect
the many tears and smiles.
I see faces I knew,
girls who dreamed
of husbands to be
and guys
who thought they would win
the world.

3.
Remembrances of northern seasons
stay with me most.
Stark, flat-plain winter nights
blew cold and taught enough
to ring like high-pitched strings
and shatter glass
before my face.
Pied and withered leaves
quietly dried
and later rustled somber over
starting classes in September.
Flowery, swamp-smelling spring,
then muggy, stormy summer months,
all marched in time.
Their onrushing tide
fast raced me forward
to change.

4.
Teachers told us
to look for truth,
but my verity, to them,
was gross disgrace.
Yet, during those days,
I found a better place.
I'll tell you of it now,
if only as a tale:

If a grain of wheat fall
into a furrow's crevice,
it first must wither
and sleep in earth.
Before the new and infant seed
can come alive,
the older shell
must pass away.

5.
On a glory-hued, autumnal day,
I left my grave.
The price of being born anew
is having to die.
But by that end,
a newness steals
upon your self, as morning seals
the darker place
of night.

"How could it be wrong," he asked,
"for a man to love another man?"
His question ripped away
a brittle husk
drawn close about my life.
Those words exploded, pinecone-like,
as a forest fire burns off
scarred deadwood trees.
Those brittle syllables,
covered me with ashes.
Years later on,
I, a pipping Phoenix,
crawled from ruins
remembering those yesterdays,
to make myself
anew.

6.
So, in looking back,
I stopped to grieve a moment brief,
and now
I never turn at all.
Still gazing ahead,
I only let myself recall
the icy morning
I awoke remade.
Upon that dawn, my soul sprang up
like winter wheat,
treasured still today
and harvested
in my heart.


December 1995.
For Wheaton College's many Gay/Lesbian Alumni:
Who we were, are, and yet shall be.