To the cargo of that vast old vessel, my lifetime
has added Art Garfunkel’s hair,

so that now, amid the billions of possible associations—
woodshavings, tapeworms, old fingers, and speaker wire—

we’ve got Garfunkel, above and behind Simon
on the cover of Bridge over Troubled Water,

hair rising like a single, boiling thunderhead
over what must have been two extremely alive young men,

hair hanging a little dismissively loose, like Dylan’s then too,
I suppose, hair that had already gone everywhere,

so that when, in a new century, I see my student,
lanky and twenty and walking down the street in a world

completely with him, I can tell you
about the curl in his hair

and we’ll have the comfort of knowing together
he is beautiful in a way that returns.

--originally appeared in Poetry Thirty:  Thirty Something Thirty-Something American Poets