End of Study Break

Posted on | August 23, 2008 |

by Jonathan Clausen

It’s as if I am aging in reverse.
Rekindled passions, dormant for many seasons,
speak to me now and ask questions:
was what once seemed right, instead
necessary protection from an aching heart?
From poverty? From pain?
Shall I try once again to cover myself in
the sheath of success which
has, in the past,
wrapped me with its gilded fabric of a duller hue?

I think I will ask my old friends.
They once were accomplice to my greatest escape.
Yet their pages are yellowed:
their brittle stacks faded from passage of time.

Perhaps, instead, I should put them away;
safe for later days, poised for fresh eyes.
The faces on the planks of this shelf
have changed much in 15 years.
Some familiarity remains.
“Hello my friends, my comforts, my teachers
I’d like to catch up.
It seems I have a moment.”