The Old College Town

 The last of my “identity” poems from a visit to my alma mater, Antioch College.

 

THE OLD COLLEGE TOWN

 

Walking the snow-white Sunday streets of the old college town,

These same streets I used to walk, dreaming of the world to come.

That floating world of possibility, of what might be,

now, hardened to the prose of what has been.

 

But still I thrill to the song 

of the lone winter bird in the bare-branched oak.

take pleasure in the sound of my steps—

new shoes and a new weight atop them—

but a familiar ring to them, a song I still love.

 

No need to list all the body’s changes—we all know how that goes—

but in my hand, an unbroken thread that stretches back 33 years.

It seems that the soul is unchanging, fluttering at the sight of the cardinal’s red wings

against fresh snow, in the same way now 

as then.

 

In a difficult time, poised between ushering my daughters’ first steps into adult life

and my parents’ last,

I retrace the path of my  first steps out into the world.

Hug the old tree in the pine forest where I once walked so happily alone, 

bow to the dorm where I lived and loved,

walk the bricks where I danced at night,

and feel the sparkle return to my sad eyes ringed by loss,

ready to meet the world anew.

 

-       2006