for Phil Levine, RIP

They are writing about you Phil — you know
good stuff — the prizes Detroit and that
poem where you said in past lives you
were that wild sun-crested fox being chased
by “ladies and gentlemen on horseback” —
you said you would wake up with the poem
ready that it slipped untangled from a dream
all you had to do was sit up and write
the stage was a poem too — even though
most of us were too prepared you
preferred to joke before we went on
before the poetry light hit us on the face
it did not matter to you — you just carved
chiseled punctured rotated danced 
and whirred past a distant gate

¤

Philip Levine was Juan Felipe Herrera’s long-time friend, colleague, and mentor.