Poem for My Twentieth Birthday

Passing the American graveyard, for my birthday

the crosses stuttering, white on tropical green,

the years’ quick focus of faces I do not remember...

The palm trees stalking like deliberate giants

for my birthday, and all the hot adolescent memories

seen through a screen of water...

For my birthday thrust into the adult and actual:

expected to perform the action, not to ponder

the reality beyond the fact,

the man standing upright in the dream.

~Kenneth Koch