I.M Martin Bochenek.

He deserves a better poem than this...and the end of it falls into banality.

Rambling Boy
I.M Martin Bochenek.

I remember why the full moon tastes of Pernod.
Birds on the Wire both, the day talked through,
and the long walk back to camp:
wine, stories, songs, so many stars.

My Rambling Boy, there’s always one more river.
One more wave. One more bend to turn
and then the long drive home, for talk and laughter.
If not for you or me, then for the ones who will inherit.

We are custodians of the song.
Apprenticed to this art of being

Human:
in a bar, Bourg St Moritz,
the full moon peering from behind the hill
to catch a juke box playing Leonard Cohen;

on a winter’s night in Birmingham
eating ice cream in the snow
drafting letters in my head

to match the ones you wrote;
on the long drive to Saint Anthony
while the thunder hammered bass lines for your truck.

It is my privilege and my pleasure
To have shared some time with you

I’ll take that with me, Rambling Boy.
And nothing, nothing, nothing
takes it away.