Ode – The Arc of Our Life in Five Acts

A Reminiscence for the Class of '71 Alumni

on the Occasion of Our 55th Year Reunion

Davidson College

June 6, 2026

Act 1 – Schrödinger’s Capsules

On December 1, 1969

They were pale blue and hollow 

    as a politician's promise of peace, 

        deadly as punji stakes in hidden pits 

that riddled the paths in Vietnam. 

    These plastic capsules were armed with slips 

        that bore all the birthdays of draft-age men. 

And so it would go – the course of our lives 

    decided by lottery. Better odds, 

        we supposed, than surviving the rapture. 

Gallows humor masked the angst 

    as networks aired the Special Report 

        sponsored by Quantas and Kool Cigarettes.

Do you recall that damnable hand 

    sifting the bin for its first victim? 

        Who could breathe as implacable fate     

grasped a capsule and pulled out the slip. 

    For a dreadful second, all our birthdays 

        quivered in superposition 

        

that settled on a single date 

        when read into reality:  

 

September 14 ... 

        I heard a curse from a nearby dorm. 

April 24 ...   

        A buddy muttered and slammed the door. 

December 30 ...  

        Someone slumped in their seat. 

I was breathing easy when they came for me. 

    The future had smiled on the foresight 

        to be born number 343. 

Act 2 – Stayin' Alive 

On the 70s

None of us would die in 'Nam 

    as we scattered through the 70s

    bearing our anthems and ideals. 

Neither could survive unscathed –

    ideals evolve and music moves on. 

The times they kept a'changing. 

We were the early Boomers 

    who grew up with Doo-Wop,  

    and gleaned ideals from Dylan; 

who swayed to soul 

    and shagged to the Tams 

    in pavilions by the sea; 

who grooved to the Byrds, 

    rocked to the Stones, 

    and tripped with Jimi Hendrix; 

who booked a seat on the Mystery Tour 

    then hitched a Magic Carpet Ride 

    and flew the Dark Side of the Moon;

who yearned for the freedom of Bobby McGee

    and the reckless abandon of Janis 

    wailing a song of longing and loss. 

We whose souls were Born to be Wild 

    were soothed by Judy Blue Eyes 

    and saw ourselves as stardust. 

We who had gone to Scarborough Fair 

    and found the wisdom to Let It Be 

    learned to relax with a natural high. 

We lived to see our music neutered, 

    herded into Oldies pens 

    and trotted out to serve nostalgia. 

We saw the best songs of our generation 

    shoved aside by the machine beats 

    and peacock posers preening 

    in discotheque dance halls.

Oh we have a right to resent disco,

    we have our reasons to grieve. 

Act 3 – Mourning in America 

On the 80s through the 00's

It could not have been dodged,

    that restless night in the early aughts 

when jolted awake in the wee hours 

    the time came for accounting. 

Was it morning in America 

    when we loosened our youthful ideals 

and launched the prime of our lives?

    Who even bothered to bat an eye 

when those who had thrilled to Thoreau 

    and thought they bore Ulysses' soul 

began to resemble Telemachus

    subdued by the duties that rule our lives? 

We took the well-trod adult path 

    pursuing the usual professions 

wielding white shirts and conservative ties. 

    As we clawed our way through the 80s 

we cradled babies, watched over toddlers, 

    traded coupes for minivans, 

drove our youths to soccer camps, 

    then dropped them off at freshman dorms ... 

 

Now into the silence that swept our lives 

    an emptiness entered as well, 

that uneasy stillness that fills a day 

    and whispers unbidden thought:

    It's time to weigh the world we wrought 

    against the world we dreamed could be, 

    to pray with the ache of desperation 

    and mourn again for America.

Act 4 – Okay Boomer  

On the teens and 20s

They were subtle at first, the signs, 

the moments that may have meant little, 

the brief encounters that culminate 

in the bittersweet conviction. Oh 

don't bother denying what the world 

surely knows – you and I are old. 

We're as far from the fall of Saigon 

as we freshmen were from Verdun. 

Now the sons of Viet Cong 

host our vets in swank hotels 

and the grandsons of saboteurs 

lead tourists through insurgent tunnels. 

The world that birthed us long since passed 

and now the days that shaped us fade.

Though we became what we could be 

the future breathes –Recede! Recede!

We see it in that sidelong glance, 

the furtive wink, a solemn nod 

as the teenage geek suppresses a smirk

fixing our frozen phone (again!).

 

We see it in the sullen clerk 

who rolls her eyes and taps her nails 

as we rummage through our wallets 

then fumble on our phones to pay,

We see it in the kindly mum 

yielding her seat on the subway, 

and we see it in that saintly nurse 

with her sweetly-patronizing smile, 

or in most any Waffle House

in the way a waitress calls us hun.

Our sons and daughters smile and sigh 

as we shuffle down the hallway 

(recalling a kiss, a son's first steps, 

a daughter's laugh, our father's death) 

only to enter the kitchen (again!) 

wondering what we came to get. 

But we are the sum of all that we were 

in our cursed and blessed years on Earth. 

We bought the right to roam eight decades 

and happily inhabit them all.

Act 5 – And Are We Yet Alive?

On the present time until

It always remains unwritten, 

        a page left intentionally blank, 

    an exercise assigned to survivors 

to see again through youthful eyes 

         the ever-fresh beginning 

     of a world that is always becoming. 

Friends, our final act is improv. 

        Until the moving hand moves on

    what will you write with the rest of your lives?

The Eternal News of Early June

 In memory of Dale Hoyt *

Come, my friend, just one last time 

and walk me down a Garden path 

reliving a ramble in early June 

when once again a hummingbird house 

is wound in silk and saliva. Describe 

how it’s layered with lichens and leaves 

then show where it hides 

high in a white oak 

cloaked in a canvas of green. 

Come weave a tale of hungry toads 

hunting the musty leaf-littered dampness 

under the air-dance of damselflies. 

Then mimic the trill of a Leopard frog 

and the plucked glunk of its Green cousin 

calling from a froggy shore. 

Now talk me through the gruesome fate 

of zombie bugs riddled with fungus 

clinging to leaf-tip graves. 

Speak of the hidden lives in soil – 

of thousand-gendered mycelia 

and subterranean slime-mold sex. 

Then show me the home of chanterelles 

where gold funnels grow 

on a green moss floor.

Bring on the air of an early summer 

bounding through a boyhood day 

recalling the ways of wonder 

and watch me shed my decades 

like the sloughed skin of an aging snake 

baking in the noonday sun.

Come the twist of eternity 

let us idle outside the gates of heaven 

to drift in the peace of a warm summer breeze.

* Over many years, Dale led the Nature Ramblers at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia. He kept a detailed record on his award-winning Nature Rambling blog site. My poem describes a ramble on June 11, 2015. Here is a link to Dale's blog post for that week: 

https://naturerambling.blogspot.com/2015/06/ramble-report-june-11-2015.html

Dale Hoyt teaching at a ramble

Ruby throated hummingbird on nest
Image by Don Hunter

The Serpent

                        Quantum strings always ring assigned 

                        frequencies  with songs that constrain 

                        matter  in  the  dance  of  chance  and 

                        brute necessity. Inert bodies undergird 

                        all  that we are.   Brains of beasts  are  

                        bullied by what came before. But life!

                Life bears the foretaste of freedom – what is not  

           forbidden, one day becomes. And in the garden, God’s  

            honey-voiced servant wakes new worlds of knowing.

                                     Ah, the siren-serpent

                                        blows jazz notes

                                                  riffs

                             below the threshold of thinking

                                       where blood rises

                                             unbidden

              and circuits etch symbols as Adam sings names

                      beasts of the field and birds of the air

                                             captured

                                       in the holy dance

                                   of fire and abstraction

                in the shade of the tree that towers mid-garden

                                        stepping lightly

                            to syncopated serpent-rhythm

                   incipient mind finds the symbol for mind

                                          regards itself 

               staring back, stripped of innocence, conscious 

                                      of consciousness

                         it falls through the face of infinity

                                             emerges 

                                      to indeterminacy

                     with furrowed temple and tart aftertaste

                                   free, aware, ashamed

                                               at last

 

On Early Summer Elderwalks

Athens, GA, June, 2023

I hike through my neighborhood 

in the guise of an old man 

with just a hint of a gimpy hip.

Gripping a gnarled walking stick, 

I’m out before the heat, 

huffing up hills, 

passed by young runners 

and mothers rolling strollers.

They nod in my general direction 

or smile past the half-seen elder.

We share the same street 

but live in different worlds.

I walk as much in memory 

as in the searing moment.

I slip through years, 

misplace whole decades.

I zig-zag through shadows 

and pause in a pool of shade. 

A warm breeze sifts the mimosa 

and I breathe its pink sweetness. 

I scan the borders of ragged lawns 

telling sumac from senna,

cats-ear from dandelion, 

wild petunia from woodland phlox.

Stopped by calls of 'Hey Mr. Bob' 

from a yard full of children at play, 

I watch their beloved Wally 

snatch a flying frisbee in stride.

As morning warms, a low drone fills 

the distance. With sun high on my back, 

I saunter home through the green 

aroma of fresh-mown grass.

On the other side of sunset, 

I watch a field full of fireflies 

tracing seductive J-shaped loops 

as signs of love in the failing light. 

In the spell of affection, I nudge 

a young snake with the tip of my stick. 

The copperhead coils, then flows 

off the asphalt into the night.

In the Divine Arms of Unfolding Earth

A medley of poems* by Gene Bianchi, selected and lightly edited by Bob Ambrose for his Celebration of Life

Is my kitchen window a glimpse into the other side?

At dawn a rare red fox appeared on the path below 

to lead me into dark conifers at the far edge.

Now it's the red-tinted chest of a hawk 

sitting still as a Buddha, 

soaking up divine rays

on a branch almost arm range, 

like cat Tony behind me

fast asleep in a patch of sun, 

both in contact with the source.

I watch an oak leaf float by 

still red, yellow and green, 

drifting to its final rest, 

waving its colors 

as it accepts a career in mulch

to build its new arbor home.

Nature is powerful 

but doesn't demand dominance.

Her cycle is simple and complex 

dancing from life to death to life.

In the beauty along my driveway

I sense a penetrating oneness,

immersed in a cosmic divine, 

closer than dolphins to their ocean

and flowers to their roots.

We are unfolding earth 

now and forever.

In blessed instants I see a peaceable kingdom, 

all seekers eating and drinking from the source, 

and under it, a quiet convergence. 

In silent unity, spirit moves in and out, 

and draws me smiling into the stream of now.

With Brother Francis I see the divine 

in every molecule of the cosmos –

sun, moon, stars, even in dust 

returning to dust as sacred, 

in death as destiny within our temporal run.

Now the reflection of a barred owl 

skims the water, moaning 

like a wounded herald 

announcing my own return apace, 

ashes to waves in the ocean of beginnings.

Here on another Ash Wednesday, 

I feel cat Max purring on my lap, 

see first hyacinths blooming, 

and sense the world's renewal.

Take heart, my friends – 

brothers, sisters, strangers, beloved – 

our common resting place 

is in good hands.

• Stanzas selected from “The Hum of it All – Poems from a Personal Journey.” Poems include “Red Hawk Teaches Meditation,” “Oak Leaves and a Puzzled Deer,” “Bringing Earth to Heaven,” “An Inward Olympics,” “The Oconee is Agitated,” and “Death as Destiny not Defeat.” 

Gene Bianchi, photographed by Penny Noah:

Yangtze Blues

Updated from original posted in 2012.

Deep in the highlands of Hubei 

wild torrents cut through gorges

carved in mists so long ago. 

Today the tamed river languishes 

caught behind a concrete slab until

released 

                to wander ancient river plains 

        stretching out on black earth flats 

    below the rolling orange groves        

        past cotton patches 

            flooded paddies 

                down through lands 

                        of grit and coal 

                            by tollway roads 

                        to concrete rows 

                    in cities of ten million

                        souls – new centers

                            that were built 

                                    to sparkle, broker 

                                            fortunes, beckon

                                        dreams and draw

                                    beleaguered masses 

                                forward, soar 

                                    into a gray-brown 

                                            skyscape, lined 

                                                with cranes 

                                                    and belching stacks 

                                                    that stitch the land 

                                                  and sky with smog 

                                                sealing earth 

                                            beneath the load 

                                        of human progress. 

                                    So the modern world goes 

                              as Gaia sighs and sets her gaze 

                        to wait upon a wiser world

                of sages and keepers who care 

        for her creatures in ages of Edens to come.