It’s nearly impossible to target the day
when spring’s new buds appear on branches,
but one morning there they are again. 
The same can be said of the precise moment
when child shifts to adult, replete with taxes to pay, 
gnawing concerns that leave bitter aftertastes
and restless nights, the rising rumble of 
mortality’s reminders, eroding the physical
like waves crashing repetitively onto shore.
Death creeps in quietly, invading the periphery,
ducking out to deliver sporadic somber surprises.
Pray hold on to that precious youth,  
its careless summer frolicking, its lies of 
invincibility, promise of endless future
waiting to be filled with realized potential. 
It’s a parlor trick, but back then, you and I
and all our peers believed it, sold on the idyllic
in books and films and songs. Life was complex
in its seeming simplicity, with social mores 
as likely as hillbillies striking it rich, 
a man with a Martian uncle, identical cousins,
an astronaut with a lovely genie in a bottle, 
a talking horse, a weak-spined adman 
married to wish-delivering witch, and more. 
We were all fish out of water 
eager for laugh-tracked solace, 
as an unpopular war stole our young men
and protests came in the form of music and drugs.
We sang along then, hoping love might affect
an older generation’s dangerous policies, but then
violence put the dreams on hold indefinitely. 
Now, decades removed from those disappointments,
we look back fondly at those long-ago summer hopes, 
the innocence of intentions almost quaint in retrospect.
In the autumn of our existence, we rake up
leaves of our remembrance, forming neat piles
to show our growing children, as they binge
on reboots and variations of what we once
watched to divert us from our problems,
knowing already the next shift in the cycle
is rapidly underway.
                        

Decades later, she appears,
a vision from the distant past, 
quiet secretary who worked
one office over at the 
corporate relocation company.
I think her name was Naomi.
After announcing my 
upcoming departure
for a better paying 
dead-end job, 
she cornered me
in the break room 
to confess her secret passion,
writing erotic novels
evenings and weekends
under some French pseudonym.
She already had sold three,
and would soon be doing
it full-time, but I shouldn’t
let anyone there know.
I had nothing to counter
her confessional thrust and parry. 
For a few restless nights,
I thought about her –
wanting to read her books,
understand the intimate 
Promethean fantasies
her words brought to life.
Since I couldn’t remember 
what her fake name was, 
I would never know.
 
Soon enough I was 
staring at the green phosphorescence
of another cathode-ray tube, 
another screen in another building
featuring glass, polished steel,
and an abundance of cubicles.
This one was for a large Japanese 
international shipping concern,
loading bills of lading from the
real world descendants of 
Hakudo Maru, the celestial being
of myth who first visited this planet 
to teach humans to build ships.
Now ships named Maru this and that 
supplied mundane inventories that
I was tasked to enter rapidly 
into a parlay of spreadsheets
that must have been important 
to some retailer somewhere.
I was living the grind of 
brain-numbing boredom,
but my attention to detail
impressed my new bosses.
Within a year came a transfer
and a promotion, then a move
to corporate headquarters
in mid-town Manhattan.
Six years later, I was heading
a division that specialized
in lawn care accessories.
I had fashioned an unlikely career 
from a lack of ambition and curiosity,
but I was considered a financial success.
 
That was decades ago.
So why was this woman
I had totally forgotten
appearing in this strange 
near-morning dream?
I’m certain it was Naomi and 
she looked positively ravishing. 
Had she come to remind me
of all the abandoned dreams,
the myriad opportunities not taken,
the sacrifices I could have made
to pursue something more meaningful
to my very own heart and soul?
When our eyes met, I felt chided.
But she smiled in a way
that was warm and reassuring,
then came closer 
to whisper something in my ear.
Before I would wake up abruptly,
she said, “Chloe Aphrodite.”