WALKING FIRST YEARS
TO THE FROST CABIN
It's our job to take you-three Judy's
the more-than-I-can-count Jasons--
up this dirt road to the Homer Noble farm
and beyond to his cabin. Another class
of first years newly arrived and this our school's
way of saying Now you're here,
dropped off from the couplets of your
parents and their lovely unpacking
worry. I know it will be hard to hear
those lines you have heard in high school
and could recite under your soon-to-be-
cried tears. Don't worry, we will say them
twice, because memory can keep
what you need and later play it back
to you. We've brought a recording of his
voice and ask you to listen in order
to think he is here, giving the gone-
by hay and rusty apples their first life
again, this time in the uncanny past
of a poem. Before they left, your fathers
and mothers said Write and call.
That's why we've taken this walk,
so you will have something to tell them
when they ask, when each of you realize
what this day has come to, that you were
here and they have driven themselves home.