25th High School Reunion

I saw her at the ’84 reunion
a little older, a little grayer,
the first fine lines on her porcelain face;
  inhabiting the body of a stranger

while here in the yearbook we are all preserved;
the teen beauty of my youthful dream;
the pot smoking wide receivers
nerds and geeks; prom king and queen

remembering the pranks
the ritual, the desecration
  the boozy fiascos and beautiful music
that came from her tender mouth

Some of us are gone
touched by the icy frost of time;
or war, blowing them away
like dust in the wind

She’s up there now at center stage
everyone’s dark fantasy lover
forever in a high school musical singing
“In the still of the Night”

Sweetly a capella; all of us together
voices rising to a festooned ceiling;
for just a moment the years are gone
and we are all so young again

wrist corsages and boutonniere
slim bodies and perfect hair
lines and wrinkles disappear
a faint scent of  roses filling the air

before the lovers who’d broken our hearts
before the war and all the regrets
all of us in fresh young skin
ready to dance it all over again.

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