C. Dale Young

C. Dale Young Poems

C. Dale Young Biography

C. Dale Young (born April 18, 1969) is an American poet and writer, physician, editor and educator of Asian and Latino descent Young writes and publishes poetry and short stories, practices medicine full-time, edits poetry for New England Review, and teaches in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. His poems have appeared in many magazines and journals, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The Paris Review, POETRY, Yale Review, and elsewhere. His work has also been included in anthologies, including The Best American Poetry. Young grew up in south Florida, and his early work is inspired by the tropical landscape of his home state. He holds degrees from Boston College (BS 1991) and the University of Florida (MFA 1993 and MD 1997). He completed his medical internship at the Riverside Regional Medical Center and his residency in radiation oncology at the University of California, San Francisco. He lives in San Francisco, California with his spouse, biologist and composer Jacob Bertrand.)

The Best Poem Of C. Dale Young

The Call

in memoriam Cecil Young

I am addicted to words, constantly ferret them away
in anticipation. You cannot accuse me of not being prepared.
I am ready for anything. I can create an image faster than

just about anyone. And so, the crows blurring the tree line;
the sky's light dimming and shifting; the Pacific cold and
impatient as ever: this is just the way I feel. Nothing more.

I could gussy up those crows, transform them
into something more formal, more Latinate, could use
the exact genus Corvus, but I won't. Not today.

Like any addict, I, too, have limits. And I have written
too many elegies already. The Living have become
jealous of the amount I have written for the Dead.

So, leave the crows perched along the tree line
watching over us. Leave them be. The setting sun?
Leave it be. For God's sake, what could be easier

in a poem about death than a setting sun? Leave it be.
Words cannot always help you, the old poet had taught
me, cannot always be there for you no matter how you

store them away with sharpened forethought.
Not the courier in his leather sandals, his legs dark and dirty
from the long race across the desert. Not the carrier

pigeon arriving with the news of another dead Caesar
and the request you present yourself. Nothing like that.
The telephone rings. Early one morning, the telephone rings

and the voice is your mother's voice. No fanfare. Your
father's brother is dead. He died that morning. And your
tongue
went silent. Like any other minor poet, you could not find

the best words, the appropriate words. Leave it be now.
You let your mother talk and talk to fill the silence. Leave it be.
All of your practiced precision, all of the words saved up

for a poem, can do nothing to remedy that now.

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