Something Solid: The Nineties: Central Pennsylvania

I.
I’d locked myself in the bedsit flat, still North Halls.
It was now or never, to pass the self-imposed
comprehensive exams which might conclude
my literary apprenticeship. What emerged was, for the first
time, an authentically real, authentically original
voice. The Beats in there, Symbolists, Montreal,
but, in the end, it was good, & it was really me.
That I had only three years of college credits to my name
was not a crippling disappointment. I could finish
the BA somewhere else. Happy Valley’s ‘98
spring: gorgeous days in a golden string. Beckoned
by recurring dreams of sublet dynasty, I re-occupied
South Atherton Street in May.

II.
Sublet dynasty: West Nittany emerged after South Atherton.
I surveyed the papers, which for me were
drenched in the ecstasy of tears, terror, & tremors
transcended. Plays were staged. No longer inchoate,
I felt charmed. I charted Central Pennsylvania as a mighty
mind— a million shades of green. For a few
months, this college town was representatively,
legitimately my possession. I consumed College Ave.
as though it were nitrous, my diploma made of universe.,
the heaven of poetry’s gravel-paths. Shifting winds
would have to take me elsewhere. Yet much of me,
I mused, must remain in the place the breakthrough
occurred, could never change. Nature’s way.
The final autumn here the first real May.