Awake my sleeper to the sun ...
The fences of the light are down
And worlds hang from the trees
Dylan Thomas

Named for that other Dylan
much admired
Welsh wordsmith
whose metaphor
for song as fire
as act
burning and crested
fire of birds
in the world's woods
encouraged me
to turn my life
around by claiming
for myself that gift
the songs of childhood
seeds of music
that my family had sown
without their seeing
the full value
of what sprang
from that well-seeded ground

This young man
whose sensitive
way with words
is only matched
by his musical flair
reminds me at times
of myself at that age
or rather the person
I would have wished
to be had I not
been so wrapped up
in myself

I remember when he
was hardly past toddlerhood
how intrigued he was
by the natural world
and the words for things
describing a find
a shell was it?
on the beach as a
nunique specimen

And how when I showed him
a ring-necked snake
on a path by our summer
home on the Vineyard
he being two or three
at the time
exclaimed
now that is a treat!

His poem Thirteen
Ways of Looking
at Lightning
evoking the great
Wallace Stevens
stunned even his teacher
who wrote the word Wow!
which was my response
as well but I doubt
that our Dylan knew
Stevens lived next door
to my father's father
Saul Berman in Hartford
Connecticut
that they often took
the trolley together
to work in the morning
my grandfather having
no inkling that his
companion was thought
by many to be
the greatest living
American poet

Too soon perhaps
for his parents
or me
but not for himself
he'll be off on his way
to college
to romance and learning
and who knows what
or where
Santa Cruz like his father?
Harvard like me?
maybe back to San Luis to study
the sea life he loves
but certainly music
will always be part
of the life he chooses
and poetry maybe
literature certainly
math like his mother
physics and chemistry
these he is already tasting
in highschool
such a rich world
as the lines quoted
above and written
by his own namesake
say better than I
ever coud