On a Flight to the 30th Reunion

When we were seventeen,
we watched a man walk on the moon,
knew that time and morality
were no more important
than electric storms and rain,
as long as Joplin played,
and the aurora borealis
crackled on the horizon.

In 1969, when we were seventeen,
our fathers were eagles
who flew across barren landscapes
of ice and snow, lighting on occasion
to strew havoc, then order.
Our mothers, flitted
and fluttered about until
the spouses took flight again.

When we were seventeen, we clustered
in Rathskellers  and BOQs, smoking ourselves
green after swallowing the worm.
When we were seventeen, air currents
and passages of flight hovered about us.
Grounded, we always looked up.

Thirty years later, we sparrows
flutter about, picking nits from our wings,
going somewhere south.