Dear Beth, Leo, Pauline, Allan,
Joshua, LaWanda, Deborah, Sabrina, and Jordan:
Born today, like us, were the poets
Ben Jonson and Barnabe Googe.
Also Vanzetti (of Sacco and Vanzetti)
and Loeb (of Leopold and Loeb)
and Green Bay’s coach Vince Lombardi,
who said winning is the only thing;
Joe Montana, who won;
Gene Wilder, funny man;
Erving Goffman, author of
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life;
Irving Howe, whose name asks
a question of the universe,
and William Styron, who suffered.
And so I write to praise the day
on which, in 1966, Tiffany Cohen
was born, who won gold medals
swimming the 400 and 800 meter freestyle
in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
– David Lehman