My next door neighbor asks, 'what is a poem?'

I've never played a video game: I'm not sure whether that's a confession or something I should be proud of.

I suppose old age is starting to get stuck in my teeth. By this I mean that I'm starting to feel most of the years--68--while thinking that I'm 45 at most; the discrepancy is starting to creep up on me. The things I think about are changing, as are the things I feel.

The things I think about: why did Mitch McConnell have to happen in my lifetime? Should I take a part-time job as a dog-walker? Is it time for me to finally accept my averageness, and with grace? 

The things I feel: patience is one of the great virtues, if not the greatest, and having none I want more. I love my family much more than I love my country, and I love my country more than I once thought.

So Ethan, 16, comes over to my house the other day. He attends The Urban School in San Francisco, and has to write a paper on an American poet. He chooses me. We sit at the table in my living room.

Ethan's read a couple of my books, and makes intelligent reference to them. He asks good questions: where does a poem come from? You write a lot about trees and rocks and sky and ocean--what part does nature play in your poetry? Personification seems something you use a lot in your poems--why? What got you started writing poetry?

I answer as best I can, knowing there are no real answers or when there are answers they're not answers I'm happy with, that they feel more like lies or half-truths or evasions or indirections than answers. I tell Ethan about the ineffable and its role in the making of a poem. The word ineffable is a word Ethan familiar with but looks up on his computer as he types my answers there.