! ! A Tribute To Philip Levine. For Hanque Poem by Michael Shepherd

Tenderness. It was forty-seven years ago
and Bernie Strempek and I were in this bar
in downtown Detroit watching this
beautiful second-rate jazz singer
and Bernie started to talk
about tenderness.
His father had abandoned this family of four
and so his mother worked nights
at Ford Rouge and she knew
Bernie wanted to become a poet
and she totally supported that.
Bernie was a guy of amazing smarts
who seemed almost too gentle
and delicate for this world
in which he did not long remain.
I didn’t know the word tenderness
but when Bernie talked of it
I thought wow, I could use some of that.

*

[From his conversations]