How to memorialize
Staples Reunion # 51?
A blog post is overly
telling and excessively
revealing.
A poem, yes,
a poem is illusory
and concealing,
concealing like gray hair,
hidden under highlights
and lowlights.
And skin lotions and miracle
potions slathered
on wrinkled, sagging skin.
There were the dearest
of old friends and a spattering
of new, and others I no longer
imagine sharing a park bench
with, like bookends.
Yes, Paul,
♪ how terribly
strange to
be seventy ♪.
Missed chances at possible
true love and what-if
sliding doors.
A drive-by this house
and that house,
and this school,
and that school,
and waiting in a parking lot
for church bells that never rang.
The barrel-chested seagulls,
who screeched and fought us
for French fries and clam bellies
at Overton’s, and a disappointing
Main Street that was unremarkable
without the legendary pink house,
Sally’s Place, and Oscar’s, and all the other
places long gone like our youth.
Some clicks pleasantly surprised,
while other cliques were still in
social play, a reminder that some
things never change.
We dressed for the 70s at almost 70,
which wigged some of us out.
And then came a devastating
and unapologetic confession,
54 years too late, about a jock-joining
sexually deviant quartet. His words
still chill me to the bone. The exceptionally
talented band concluded with Forever Young;
if only it were so. And in the end, the goodbye hugs
were tighter and longer, just in case.
But there was no hug for him.
The sicko confession teller;
the one who burst my High School
Reunion bubble.
