1.
Last summer's flowers on the sill,
desiccated and fragile—
the goldenrod hoary and gray,
the daisy bowed and petalbare.
Ah, but the wild sunflower,
wizened though it be,
is still insisting on yellow,
and the civilized zinnia
is still blushing mauve,
even when losing its head,
bless their calyxes.
2.
This summer the survivors
of The Class of '63
will gather at a faux plantation
in Western Pennsylvania
for what the committee has dubbed
"Our Last Big Reunion,"
meaning only informal sit-arounds
from here on out for the last of us,
no business casual, no honey-glazed ham,
no peach cobbler, no party boat tours
of the sprawling, shallow lake
that now floods the fields and the woods
where the last glacier stopped,
and where we parked with our dates.
3.
Am I going ?
Perhaps.
I wonder if she'll be there, the girl
with the honey-colored ponytail
that stunned me in first grade.
I hear she uses a walker these days.
Another who long inhabited my dreams
will not be there, I'm told, now confined to a chair.
And what of the ghosts of dead teammates,
the rangy shortstop and the quick centerfielder ?
How many lifetimes in a life ?
4.
So, which am I ?
Certainly the zinnia,
tame and losing its head.
Maybe I'll drop a few pounds and appear
to see myself in the faces of the others,
those fine old children, to remember myself
in the thrill of youth, first loves
with limitless futures, and the ultimate
disillusions we've all come to know.
Or maybe I'll stay where I'm settled,
half a century in these mountains,
for good or for ill, watching
the robins yank worms from the yard,
wild daisy, wild sunflower, wild solidago,
all of us in the same blue vase.
