Did you flavor it with Hemingway,
or season it with Thoreau

Did you structure it like Eliot,
or was Melville more your go

The rocks you choose to stand upon,
supports to look beyond

As you add your face onto the mountain,
new words inscribed in song

Past voices serve to push you,
to that place you’ve never been

Where your breath may cleanse forever,
the stain
—of unoriginal sin

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2017)