Jersey Blues Selected Poems

Like a pilgrim or a spiritual vagrant crisscrossing the country-always rolling on the very fabric of the continent: westwards and eastwards to the eternal oceans and from the northern vast plains down through the Appalachian to the deep recesses of the lowlands to the swamps-infallibly enough I would always return to my dwelling in Princeton. Many a time the lonely night was devoted to the contemplation of the moon of New Jersey as I licked the wounds of a sore soul. I always wondered how different that pale ghostly circle of a moon was from the one I encountered elsewhere above the magnificent land that I had been scampering about and from the lost moon of my childhood. Yet with adulthood-or maturity-seeing at last the rise and fall of earthling matters I would flinch my heart recoiling as from something unpleasant. Thus through the jaundiced estranged buoy in the sky I would recall past memories and hold out my quivering hand to reach over to the always-receding mysteries of existence.