A boy, really, just out of high school.
Catholic, Coughlin parish
Funny nose
Ambitious
Comes to Ann Arbor sui generis.

Where did he get his voice?
His writing gift?
His American just do it?

Could have been anything
Chose to make the world better
For down-trodden Blacks
For Vietnamese peasants
For students looking for meaning.

Camus comes to mind
But Albert stuck with writing.I am the married woman
Just four years older
Who admired him from afar
Though he did teach me
The frug in an accidental meeting
In Ann Arbor circa ’66.

Forty years later
We encounter each other again
In a convention hotel

He tells me he’s dying.
We’re all dying, I say.
Ten years and he is dead.

— Zelda Gamson