Robert had asked that I read or speak. I now pulled from my satchel his own well-worn peach-colored collected Whitman.

Seated in the airport diner, they asked, “Would you consider. Now?—Her plane’s not here for another twenty-three minutes. Would you, as … practice, to see if you … how it feels. It would be a favor to us really. Our small talk today feels increasingly small. Be nice to some poetry he liked.”

I nodded, feeling uneasy, but why? Then I heard almost a laugh, and felt him breathe over my shoulder, amused, even by the awkwardness, especially that, since, among us, awkwardness is often what’s most alive! That’s why it scares us so.

So, here goes, over sounds of flight announcements and Muzak’s arrangement of “Strangers in the Night,” I cleared my throat, I leaned a little more their way:

“‘In Paths Untrodden’ by Walt Whitman, from the Calamus poems, Leaves of Grass. Okay … here goes …

‘In Paths Untrodden’

“In paths untrodden,
In the growth by margins of pond-waters,
Escaped from the standards hitherto published, from the usual
pleasures, profits, eruditions, conformities,
I know now a life, which does not exhibit itself, yet contains all the rest,
And now, separating, I celebrate that concealed but substantial life.
And now I care not to walk the earth unless a friend walk by my side,
And now I dare sing no other songs, only those of lovers.
Was it I who walked the earth disclaiming all except what I had in myself?
Was it I boasting how complete I was in myself?
O little I counted the comrade indispensable to me!
O how my soul—How the soul of man feeds, rejoices in its lover, its
     dear friends!
Here by myself away from the clank of the world,
Tallying and talked to here by tongues aromatic,
No longer abased—for in this secluded spot I can respond as I would
     not dare elsewhere,
Resolved to sing no songs today but those of manly attachment,
Bequeathing hence types of athletic love,
I proceed for all who are or have been young men,
To tell the secrets of my nights and days,
To celebrate the need of the love of athletic comrades.”

They nodded, held back. It seemed okay. “That’ll preach,” the father said. Then we could, till Angie arrived, pick our way amidst the flat earlier conversation about weather, urban blight, my fantasy house search, how many square feet I’d like, comforting, nothing.

We soon stood at the gate awaiting her plane. This tired, I found myself feeling briefly miffed that Gideon, Ansel, and Marco weren’t coming, why always me? Till I understood they were also dead.

Ansel’s mother had just mailed Angie his obit in an envelope otherwise unmarked. I recalled the other two’s funerals. I’d once heard of an athlete so fast he could throw a ball up and over the roof of his cottage and, by bolting through its open central door, catch it as it rattled down that roof’s far side.