it's early june in englewood and the evening is turning dark blue,
it's a graduation or a class reunion, something like that -
there's a tent with lights out on the fields.
all around us, people are walking towards each other with open arms,
bags are dropped into the grass.
the wind comes rippling down the hill,
smelling of duck pond, smelling of daffodils rotting under pine trees.

the school buildings are revealed,
as if my memory of them was burning away in the sight of them,
here before me.
the age of seventeen seems imminent.
the land is still the same, still a steepish slope, marked by the bowls of the playing fields,
the woods, the library and its circular drive,
where, in the center, the magnolia trees have grown up into a little grove,
now in bloom.

over the air comes the sound of little kids running and shouting,
glasses shivering against one another.
i can hear my mother.
behind me, the sun is going down in the valley, pale pink shading overhead to night.

if this were a movie, the camera would turn around us slowly now,
grab this moment out of thin air and preserve it for the library of eternal times.
this is a dream, a memory, maybe a relic.
the world has gotten colder since then.
i wish i could show you the evening,
so real that you could feel the air on your skin,
so you could remember this with me.