Young Man Blues

There is the attention of young men glancing
and smiling and waiting for me to talk
to them and take over, to relieve them
of the need to be men alone in the world
with all the weight and challenge to become better
than their fathers, to strengthen and grow,
to find their place and reject their crowd
and make their own path, instead learning
from me to carve, to form and reject
and plow through toward making themselves
into men waiting for the smile of a young man,
which will make them happy and think of being young