​
IN A LONG LIFETIME


I do not spend my nights
like all the Londoners
who seventy-plus years ago
huddled deep in the Underground
while their city's buildings were bombed
to cinders by the Blitz.  And yet--

and yet, bombarded
by so many decades of years,
I wake up every morning
and learn of more old houses
leveled, more people I knew
now ashes.





FRIENDS


Clowning around in class,
rooting for our school teams,
sipping sodas downtown,
and partying partying--
my three best friends and I
enjoyed our high school days
right to June graduation.  Yet

by September, easily as birds
veering in different directions,
the four of us glided apart--
into the army, trade school,
jobs in other states.
Disappeared from each other's lives.

Bewildered, I filled the silence
by remembering all we'd done,
but then began to feel the presence
of what we had never done--
how we never sat in a diner or car
and talked about troubles at home
or about how hurt we were when a girl
we liked snubbed our smiles,
about how we didn't really know
what we wanted to do with our lives,
about our deepest selves.