A Lineage of Wanderers

In college

I was fortunate enough

to read Blue Highways

and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,

both of them

tales of wanderers

in the hidden byways

of America.

I didn't think of it then,

but they were helping explain

not only the country 

but myself

to me.

And so I suppose,

like any poet,

I sing of myself,

now,

about my part

in a much larger tradition

that continues

to this day.

Lessons in Life

So this is to say,

I guess I want to suggest

that Greg taught me

a few lessons in life,

how to succeed

even in the midst of failure,

how to seize the moment,

not in the ways

others will see

but how they make sense

in the moment,

or even outside of them,

to be grateful

even when nothing makes sense,

to look for the inescapable

in the face of the inexplicable.

I don't know.

I thought I could explain it better,

but even now, 

what I really have

is what I've always had,

this strange relationship

with a stranger named Greg,

the best friend I ever had.

The Hug

The signal event

that occurred between

Greg and myself,

in life,

for me

(I always wonder

how it was he thought of me,

in part 

because of this moment),

was the hug.

In high school,

as I've mentioned,

I acted in a series of plays,

and so the other students

who tended to participate,

especially in the one-act competitions,

tended to be

a kind of family,

and when it was time

to climb aboard a bus,

they'd be out there

waiting,

like any other group,

and that was how it was

the day the hug happened.

Now, to understand the hug,

you need to know

how awkward I am

around others.

It doesn't matter

how I can fake it now,

how I've faked it for years,

when I've had to.

I don't know what to do

around others.

That wasn't Greg;

that day when I showed up,

he ran up to me

and gave me a hug.

My arms were stiff;

they didn't know 

what to do

even as I saw

Greg running up to me,

even as he hugged me.

My arms were still stiff,

my hands shoved in my pockets,

when he hugged me,

and that remains

my memory

of that hug,

that he was so enthusiastic

in that moment,

and I was locked up,

unable

to reciprocate,

and I want to believe

he still understood

that I appreciated

the gesture,

because despite how I took it,

I think I still suggested

what I felt,

which was gratitude.

That was Greg,

for me,

that moment,

that zest for life,

even when life didn't greet me

the same way.

I don't care how it ended;

for me that is the story

of Greg's life.

Hey Jude...

I've written before

about this one.

In many ways

it was the signal event

for why Greg became

so important

to me.

One day, months after

I'd heard the news,

frustrated with how things were

in my life,

I had a dream about Greg.

In it he recommended

that I read

Jude the Obscure.

In those days,

I was still developing

a mature sense

of literature,

finding my way

to reading good books

after spending too many years

wasting my time

with junk material,

indulging myself

when I should have been

enriching myself.

When I read Jude

I understood the difference

better than I ever had,

even though I'd already

invested in Melville,

found at least one great writer

on my own,

whittled away my college years

in a program

that twenty years later

pays only dividends

privately.

Jude was an act

of pure pathos,

an elegy

for the kind of life

I myself

was now living,

and perhaps,

the kind Greg had as well,

without my ever knowing it,

before it was too late.

Reading Jude

was like walking under an overpass

as cars zoomed across.

And I never would have read it

without Greg's unlikely

intervention,

an act

I still can't explain,

since dreams

normally

are some strange combination

of the thoughts you already have,

not something new,

not something

someone you knew

had never talked about

with you,

and you hadn't seen

in forever,

who has since died,

and you feel guilty

at having taken

for granted.

But Jude is a book

that kind of explains

things like that.

And I thank you again,

Greg.

Rumbo

One of the plays

I acted in

while in high school

was Rumbo,

a farcical take

on Rambo.

It was my conviction

at the time, 

as it remains now,

that instead of Brendan Crafts

(another, more recently,

who died before his time),

it should have either been Brett Groh,

or Greg,

cast as the title character.

Brett remains

his own kind of goofy,

but Greg

was always intangible,

which I guess

might have been part of the problem,

but a perfect space to occupy

in such a role.

Maybe he lived the role.

Actually,

I'm just trying to remember

if Greg was even in

that production.

I had two left arms

in one of my bit parts for it,

or maybe two right;

well anyway,

one of them 

was ripped off.

Just not as much 

as Greg was,

and the rest of us.

Go!

Greg played a game

called Go,

which I'd never heard of

until I learned about

reading about his participation,

his enthusiasm

for it.

And for years

it was just the name

of a game he played,

and I had no idea what it was,

and then finally

one day I looked it up,

and I actually

just looked it up again,

since I never got around

to playing it myself.

My family loves to play games,

although most of them

are board games

or card games,

so the closest we came to Go

was the common games

like backgammon

or Chinese Checkers.

Greg was as close to a pro

at the game of Go

as there is ever likely

to be.

It occurs to me

the more I think about it,

the longer I live,

and here we are

nearly twenty years later,

and what I would really like

is to one day

play Go,

and maybe 

make a habit of it.

I have little doubt

Greg could beat me,

but I guess

what I'd really like,

would be to lose a game of Go

to him.

I'm not always a very good loser,

which is probably why I don't play a lot of games

these days.

I'd happily lose to him.

Still In Disbelief

In 2005

I heard the unexpected news

of Greg Lefler's death.

His was not the first

early death

of those I had known

in my youth,

but it remains

the most shocking.

The Greg I knew

was filled

with a kind of life

I didn't know

and perhaps

only seem to

now,

although maybe

that's what it's always like,

as I reflect back now,

the small glimpses

we catch

of the lives

playing out

around us.

The last I'd heard of him

before that,

he was immersed

in a game I couldn't identify

until I looked it up

years later,

and I admired

that he had gotten

so caught up in it,

but in hindsight

I guess,

he'd gotten caught up

in other things

and couldn't disentangle

himself

except in the only way he had.

I still can't explain it,

I don't understand it,

and I wish he were still here.