41 Years Later

How can it be that
our high school graduation
was 41 years ago?
492 calendar pages flipped
and slipped through our fingers,
slick with holidays and birthdays,
anniversaries, funerals, births.

So many changes in 14,965 days.
At times, it seems so long ago
and yet, some memories crackle
with a crispness, so clear it could
have happened yesterday.

Reunited, we revisit hallowed halls
that echo with steps racing the bell
to class, praying for the bell for recess,
lockers crammed with textbooks
when technology didn’t include
google, smartphones, and no hiding
grades when teachers email test scores
to parents.

Our younger selves played outside
until streetlights sizzled on, then
home for family dinner, homework,
maybe some tv before bed. We drank
from hose bibs, water bottles not
a necessity everywhere we went.
We rode bikes without helmets
or knee and elbow pads, we jumped
into dirty lakes, and made friends
with everyone.

We grew into after school jobs,
took road tests, some a few times;
we got junker cars, piled in on
Saturday night, cruised to nowhere
so long as we were home by 11.
We dated, got dumped, dated, went stag
to school dances, got dates for the prom,
and never envisioned we’d be together
again now.

So, 41 years later, some missing,
some gone too soon, here we are,
a reunion of kids in dress-up clothes,
pretending we’ll never grow up.

~ J R Turek
June 26, 2021 Hour 10