The photo’s since softened to amber,
Holding light like honey, its colors, long ago
Drawn from trees, aged in the intervening
Years by acids in the air. I remember:
The sun-hot sand, whitecaps that glint and grow,
Climbing to a brilliant crash. You’re leaning
And smiling over me, a blond boy, my hair
Lit like gold at noon, your dawn-red hair held
By a kerchief of forest and deep-sea blue—
You are beautiful, and we are a pair,
And I am still with you, embraced between
Spring and winter in the eternal and true
Summer, autumn always coming on,
You, forever there, smiling with your son.

“‘Ship Bottom, 1972’—an even more personal poem, about his mother—is a great example of how music can evoke emotion: in this case, a devastating sense of longing. ‘Ship Bottom, 1972’ is in the first section of Last One Out, which is centered on Hilbert’s childhood. These powerfully nostalgic poems provide the book with its emotional core.” – Literary Matters, 12.1 (Fall, 2019)