Pedagogy of the Depressed

for JW and JB

In sudden blossom then slowly out, sat down once in giant laughs
while the little tramp pratfell down the lecture hall screen—
another St. Paul morning
full of grace. The sideways looks of sober college staff
heated hotter than black cooling coffee. A whole world proved mean
and rough, little warning

for interior men, bearded poet-scholars with yellowed nails,
bats in the hair, families prodded to a river bridge’s edge
or the inevitable hospital bed.
If these two were birds, they were heavy birds, explicating tales
without flight. Heavy and land bound, they semester-pledged
perpetual flapping with hearts of lead.

Pleasant thought, pal, to say God has no memory, forgiven all.
I would really like to think that and the two teaching together—thick hands,
thin fingers,
shaking through glasses of comic spirit, dream bottles, late night scrawls,
praying sweet water drops on the dry bone lands
and hoped-for mercy may linger.