Growing Up
Most teenagers are boring in the mind.
The geniuses, those yet to be, as much
As all the rest. It is as if they’re blind
To utterness unless it has a touch
Of hormones in it. Once I searched the old
Card catalogue at Harvard and I found
There Henry David’s teenage journal. Gold
It wasn’t. Actually I almost frowned
In spite of holding holiness there in
My hands, his own handwriting. It was bland,
Containing nothing Transcendental. Thin
Pedestrian, pure adolescence canned
Is what he jotted down. Of course I had
No right to think it wouldn’t be just bad.