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.