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A Lakeland Benediction
2nd Iteration
In Memory of Stephen Gould
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Old Main. There are secret graffiti written on the walls of its tower room.
Rather than delinquent scribbling, by now they have acquired an aura
From the passing centuries akin to inscriptions on tombstones,
Albeit more encrypted. The wind that howls is oblivious.
No roosting owls, no hiding mice, carry any of these messages abroad.
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The Woods. Now ghosts, a past generation of seminarians
Practiced their sermons out back by the river.
Later, pontificating verse, a lone poet stood on the bank in their stead,
As if he were their shadow on the water, their echo above it.
But the river could never float holiness, much less overflow with it.
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What will be the tuning fork to vibrate Lakeland’s frequency anew?
News of it isn’t to be found here in the artifacts
Awaiting some future class in archeology.
Attuned to Stephen Gould, who established and taught in Japan,
Let us follow in his footsteps indefatigably, as well as in each other’s…
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Until we return here old, our fardel stowed on the stoop of Old Main.
What awaits?
By day, the birds silently espy us from every height,
Their gorbels warbling on branches en tremblant.
At dusk, in Grether Wood, bats greet the ghosts, not us.
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They wriggle out of the bone white homes
That students of biology once pegged into the trees.
Purveyors of ultrasonic ultrasound,
No tuning fork can tame their batshit weirdness,
Much less corral the flitting birds to sing chorales.
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At midnight, the tree spires only etched against the stars,
Old Main floods with light. We wonder, “Who keeps the lights on?”
A memory mentors: “That’s right, Dr. Gould promised to do it.”
On a frequency out of the past, as if our hearing was as tweaked as a bat’s,
Our ears perceive an eerie tune, or two,
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Then more. They intertwine into an intricate splendor.
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The choir was always practicing under the eaves, as was the band.
Their music making filtered down, floor by floor,
Infiltrated room by room.
It was a ghostly shadow on every class,
The faintest echo above a professor’s lecture.
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Now, the music floats a beckoning welcome,
Sporadically overflows into a brass and choir paean,
The hymn for hailing heroes.
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Steven Golden
Green Valley, Arizona
July 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 2026
stevengoldenpoetry 