50th Reunion: Westide High
How did we get here so suddenly,
with our bags and baggage, looking
the worse for wear, the ones misfortune
hasn't wrung into anything-but-perfect
strangers? Old buddies, old loves,
old antagonists chat at the bar
in the Hilton lobby; white-haired, no-haired
dyed-haired, ringers for those oldsters
so irrelevant to proms and cruising,
to study halls and going steady—to life
as we knew it. The smithereens
of yesteryear, mostly orphans who’ve buried
Mom and Dad, we’re holding out
in a Guadalcanal of hazard and heart-soreness:
edema, angina, sarcoma, thrombosis.
Casualties mount, as do the MIAs.
Why aren't we vexed? Why aren't we
screaming? Never mind; we're here, upright,
and don't have time to skip the niceties,
which never seemed so nice,
or to sweat the threats, as the dead,
ever younger, smile toward the future
from our senior yearbook. It's too late
for a fallback plan. Tonight,
we'll savor the motel cuisine, pass
the Inglenook, and believe there's nothing
opulent as this departure.
Copyright Credit: William Trowbridge, "We Real Old" from Put This On, Please. Copyright © 2014 by William Trowbridge. Reprinted by permission of Red Hen Press.
Source: Put This On, Please (Red Hen Press, 2014)