WALK ON BY . . .
It could be on a warm summer afternoon,
a breeze blowing through the open screen
in the den, where you having been viewing
a film, Break Up, and a thought comes to mind.
What if one day you’d be sitting on a park bench
in Central Park, perhaps feeding the pigeons,
or watching the dog walkers walking by,
and you’d see her walking by.
It would be more than 50 years after
you had last seen her, but you know
you would know her anywhere, any time,
that oval olive face, that secret smile.
And what would you say to her?
Would she recognize you, you who are
so very different from what you were then,
a teen in love with a teen so many years ago?
You loved her in the first blush of youth,
in those heady, vital future-thinking days
so full of the splendor of first love,
so heartrendingly pure and dream-filled.
Those summer days on a blanket on the beach,
lying under the sun, the waves gently rolling,
the squeals of children in the little pools
by the sand castles they were building.
And, then, after the summer, when reality came
refusing to open the door to what could be,
with the long train rides, the lack of money,
the uncertainty of what to do with a life ahead.
And then, the phone call, the almost suicidal break up,
for no reason other than not knowing what to do,
the lack of confidence in what you were capable of,
the fear of inadequacy and possible failure to fulfill.
And you now know you will not be sitting on a bench
in Central Park feeding pigeons or watching
the dog walkers and others walking by,
and that she would never really walk on by.
Stanley H. Barkan |
