Posted by Hardy Parkerson, Atty. on 8/29/05

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Young man, I have seen thee strolling
In the stillness of the park.
Day by day, hand in pocket
Of your thin, familiar jacket,
Twlight into dark.
I have come to know your whistle,
Know your collie,
Know your cap.
Have seen the straggling sunlight hold you,
Watched the emerald grass enfold you
In its loving lap.
With your lichened switch I see you
Flick the mushrooms in your way.
And I know what you are thinking.
Would that through the soft mist falling
You could hear a stranger calling,
Stay!

Anybody know who wrote this poem which is said to have
been J.F.K.'s favorite? One interpretation of it is of a
young man who strolls in something like Central Park (NYC)
each afternoon late and is watched from the window of a
high-rise apartment or hosptial nearby by an invalid
and/or homebound disabled person (surely a female), who
looks forward each day to the young man's arrival and
watches his every move, and that of his collie, and who is
close enough to hear his whistle, or can see that he is
whistling and "hears" it in her own mind, and who dreds
the time when the younng man walks away from the park just
before sun down. That evaluation of the poem was more or
less written in some other words by my late, great father
J.D. Parkerson, born Rocky Mount, LA, 1911, a poet
himself, among other things. I wonder if my father wrote
that poem. If so, he never told me he did. However, I
found it among his possessions after he died, as well as
his intrepretation of it, and the memorandum to which his
hand-written interpretation was attached said that this
was J.F.K.'s favorite poem. But I wonder who did write
it. Does anybody know?

Sincerely,

Hardy Parkerson, Atty.
Lake Charles, LA

Re: J.F.K.'S FAVORITE POEM, 9/01/05, by Dr. Martin Hughes - San Jose State.

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