Read at the Eiffel Tower, July 23, 2018
For H. R. Stoneback who made that day and many others come true.

Paris is always here and so are those we miss
the voice you hear that calls the garden birds
a dream you had, her song that shaped the words:
Paris, Hemingway, the faces that we face

we long to touch and laugh, hold hands and dance
beneath the stones that call their names, we hear:
Charles Péguy, Guillaume Apollinaire
Isaac Rosenberg, Edward Thomas

T. E. Hulme, Alan Seeger, Rupert
Brooke, Joyce Kilmer, Julian Grenfell,
Wilfred Owen, others, so many fallen
poets, fields of poppies, under earth,

one hundred years has made for many books
that teach us how to sing the ancien chanson
yet time demands we pause to harmonize
and hear the language of the holy ghost

say the word: Paris, and the man:
Hemingway, and others left to tell
after war and forever still
the stories of artists who might have been.

We inherit from them possibility
the maybe of a moment yet to perfect
a poetic posture of penitence
to make new the tragic discovery

of our mutual human suffering
today’s song redeems mere good intentions
we sing it loud together and those we miss
we sing them back into joyous being

as if with hope our words can touch their love
hear them say to us, thank you for coming
here for making Paris dance our names
for celebrating the feast that always moves.