An Ode to Dylan Thomas When you joined the towering dead And looked back on your sullen art,

Did you find your following of secret hearts Did you find you could not part From your fading Winters Tale, And saw its last breath fail as your own Did you lay gasping there, In your jaundice-bled grave When you followed Him out of grace When the blows of the rains came calling, And you had drowned in your dry, cold world Were you thinking of timeworn memories curled? Were you thinking of each line you traced In the wounds of us all, of our paltry face, Of sorrows you laced in your blackest ink? Your burning acid scrawl wed swallow When you were free from tortured breath And out of reach, in your timeless hollow. On my own fern hill I wondered, suppose When finished smothering the warmth in our grip We burn the petals of our guilt-thorned rose.