huck

Ocean-envious of
the sixteen-year-olds streaming
coolly onto campus
on a mid-week morning, but
why envy? I am to them
as a reptile is to
a sobering amphibian.
I suppose it must be
the manifest memory
conferred unconsciously
in the Morse code of their steps:

When I was their age I met
new peers who saw not
with eyes, but congenial words;
experimentation was
refreshingly inconclusive; I fell
in love without a voice
and learned about the great
repression.
My part in all of those lives
is ineffaceable.

Barely a decade ago
and already I reach for the hook.
Enough. Life is fair and
the present is fine; the present
is superior
for it contains all conjecture.

Label that time
"before the pause", and leave
the desk unlocked.

27/09/06