Decade Trilogy
by S. R. Gyll (Steve Argyle)
Photographs and memories,
Christmas cards you sent to me,
All that I have are these,
To remember you.
Thirty years. Not yet half a lifetime,
But a long time nonetheless.
I cannot tell which has accumulated
The finer patina, my old D-Books
Or my filtered memories.
Both are nearly antique, yet still
Inexplicably bright and new.
Memories that come at night
Take me to another time,
Back to a happier day,
When I called you mine.
Beneath the layer of years
And the calluses that experience brings,
I am surprised to find the callow
Boy I was. Still naive. Still hopeful.
Still full of passions unpolished by
The grit of accumulated time
And (dare I hope?),
A little hard-won wisdom.
Summer skies and lullabies,
Nights we couldn’t say goodbye,
And of all of the things that we knew,
Not a dream survives.
I am not now, of course, the boy I was.
But neither is the boy I was dissolved
And lost in a homogenous me, now.
He is still there, whole but hiding
At the bottom of the pile of my years,
An impish alter-ego that never quite grew up.
Photographs and memories,
All the love you gave to me,
Somehow it just can’t be true
That’s all I’ve left of you.
His joy still delights. His pain,
If exposed to scrutiny, still hurts.
His impertinence quotient is housebroken but undimmed.
The Moody Blues and John Denver still
Affect him as deeply as they ever did.
And still, if you speak of him,
“Then must you speak of one that
Loved not wisely, but too well.”*
But we sure had a good time
When we started way back when.
Morning walks and nighttime talks,
Oh, how I loved you then.**
I am surprised, but not ashamed, to
Confront my high school self, and to
Find him still so intact. I do not
Think it wise to “maturely” dismiss our youthful
Memories as things of little consequence.
I cherish the boy I found beneath the pile.
He is, after all, the seed of myself.
Though I know few of you as the people you are now,
I cherish the people you were, and still are deep inside.
- Sean Gyll
*with apologies to William Shakespeare
**with apologies to Jim Croce