To all of my fellow classmates who survived Fine's Great Books. With all apologies to the Bard. Enjoy!

Forty Years On

Within the semi-hallowed halls
my mind's eye sees friends lost, long ago.
Expounding upon the meaning of life
the tome that had not yet been written.
Of course we could only see back then
what fit on the twenty-inch diagonal screen.
The truths we knew were so obvious,
though only to ourselves and Id.

When all those authors were the rage
Tolstoy, Hardy, Dostoyevsky and Fine!
Our minds were bursting; Prometheus was again unbound.
The joy and knowledge that our every thought
must have been unique. These must have changed by now, or not?
From Pong to PacMan to Pokemon GO!
The names have changed, but the players remain the same

The world, it was a changin' then.
We thought we knew the roads and mile roads less traveled.
Power walking and plodding, marathoner and stroller,
proceeding along entranced
by Walkman, Ipods, fitbits, et al.
Some healthy, some ill. Some better, some worse and those who never had a chance.

With mortgages and marriages, cars, divorces, lawsuits
and now your offsprings' student loans.

The once-grand thoughts have faded.
You look way back, over forty years
and remember lessons once forgotten.
You are not the rebel you once thought you were.
The mirror image staring bleakly back,
strangely familiar. The deep
and darkest truth comes forth.
Change is not always the way.

But are those things that mattered most,
different than what we thought.
When forty years on we look back
and progress fail to see.

That old sot we laughed about,
is facing us squarely down.
The dreams that once belonged to us
on the cusp of gen baby boom.
Are like the flowers and the dust they have now become.

We wax and wane yet still do not see
what is just beyond our grasp.
That destiny that seemed so near,
we never have fully achieved.
Yet, through the eyes of those still young
the truth is plain to see.
It lies within the hopes and dreams
of forty more years still on.