stevengoldenpoetry

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Professing A Portrait

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Bossard was a homely house out of a tale. Old, it was. 

How many chapters were there to read between the clapboards?

I advanced through a parlor with a piano no one dared play.

I found him in the nests of small offices pushed into the back.

Alarmed to see me, he placed a call.  On the wall, Hemingway stared back at me.  Evaluating?

An explanation given, Dr. Gould sighed. Then he became himself.

Transcending my transcript, he penciled in his many astringent opinions. 

He also uncorked a corny joke. He warned me:

“Don’t be a stranger.”

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On the far side of my diploma, I entered President Gould’s office

To write a check.  Frankly, this felt alien to both our natures…staged. 

The office was in the eaves of a newly renovated Jubilee Hall.

Now renamed, the poetry of  “Jubilee” was erased

By a moniker entirely prosaic.

Decades of achievement had left Stephen decorated but not decorous. 

From either side of a desk as imposing as an altar, we playfully

Shooted the breeze. An on the spot, ad hoc fraternity,

We were just two jubilant delinquents in the old time Jubilee Hall.

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Not being a stranger, nonetheless, at times I returned incognito.

Ditching my everyday mufti, my ego muffled, I walked into the woods.

I remembered the seminarians who practiced their sermons there,

Out back by the river, a place where I recited my poems.

Leaving the trees once again for the chapel, I liked to think

Stephen Gould, and so many others 

Were on a lookout from the windows of Old Main. 

Perhaps they looked directly at me, while I stood looking for them.

I keep a faith in them, and they in us. We alumni keep a faith in one another.

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Steven Golden

June 1st, 2nd, 2026

Green Valley, AZ