April 19 — Halcyon Days
1 min readApr 19, 2020
On Being Voted Most Reliable in 1979. The high school yearbook catalogs
The pixelation of a former life.
When we were young.
When we were naive.
When we were all beautiful.
When our youth and naivete`
Made it impossible
For us to see how beautiful
Our youth had made us.So in the current of this interlude
With an invisible enemy,
A former classmate whom I knew not well
Expressed a wish to own a catalog
So obsolete and out of date
That it chronicled today
The narrow view of everything
We didn’t know back then.And having two of these editions
And a stamp -
I mailed the better, firmer book
And wished my peer the best.
She shared that in the haze and distance
Of a untidy former life
She couldn’t afford the publication -
Or senior portraits capturing
The magic that one’s youth exerts
On existential beauty.I truly hope she revels in the moment,
Treasuring the thrill
The photos capture — innocence
And wonder -
And the scales are somehow balanced
Through the intervening years,
Erasing anything she didn’t have.
