"Gilberto's Dictionary"

JRG you were good to me,
You even tried to teach “The Great Gatsby”
& it wasn’t your fault that even though
Teenagers know what cheating & relationships &

Money & power are, they really don’t.

Now the dictionary that your Dad gave you and you loaned me,
Well it gets a lot of work and the truth you see,
Is that I get sad that a lot of the words used now were not included
Back in the mid-sixties “Webster’s New World,” and a lot of the words in it
Seem pretty archaic now---isn’t that a tragedy?

You taught and took some of us to see “Macbeth” and “Henry the Fourth Part II”

For that I am always in your debt, and also for trying to pair me up

With an beautiful and intelligent girl that should have married better,

But life is uncomfortably very much like “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”

And seldom do we have linens monogrammed with a JG or even a JRG.

Cousin-Preacher was a great fellow two and our trio cut an ample swath

Through the jumbled jungle of Deliverance-esque rural landscapes, those

Clannish consortiums which bordered the few hiccups of culture within cheap gas range.

Drive to Knoxville for a lousy taco from Taco Rancho? Yes please!

Part two of the joy of living, after playing in the woods, was our friendship.

We could talk Gore Vidal & Ken Kesey & The Bard & Twain (I still feel so sad that he

Was an Atheist- Why? Why? Why?) I wish I could ask you now JRG, but time and tide

Didn’t wait for us either, & once I was freed from the sallow, fallow Pit, I dared not look back for
Fear of becoming a pillar of salt like many of the natives there, mired in wallow.

The Book will come back to your house someday-for now it is still needed, dearest JRG.