Where have you gone so soon, friend?
Have your eyes burnt out like stars for the dawn?
We once laughed, drank, talked about
Eliot and his cats, Hemingway’s fascination with the phallus.
Now you’ve disappeared like the wind
On one of those warm summer nights
That seems to have sidled out of time.

When you return, will you remember
The dreams you carried like nitroglycerine?
Be what you were. Dance to a song not yet composed,
Moving for the sake of moving,
But not for the sake of movement.
No, friend, that’s where you differ.

Samuel Hovda is an undergraduate at Winona State University studying Literature and Creative Writing. He has been published in Poetry Quarterly, Midwest Literary Magazine, and the bad futurist. He was a finalist for the 2011 Rebecca Lard Award for Poetry.