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Column 076

Reunion

Intro by Ted Kooser
09.13.2006

I’d guess we’ve all had dreams like the one por­trayed in this wist­ful poem by Ten­nessee poet Jeff Daniel Mar­i­on. And I’d guess that like me, you too have tried to nod off again just to cap­ture a few more moments from the past. 

Reunion

Last night in a dream
you came to me. We were young
again and you were smiling,
happy in the way a sparrow in spring
hops from branch to branch.
I took you in my arms
and swung you about, so carefree
was my youth.

What can I say?
That time wears away, draws its lines
on every feature? That we wake
to dark skies whose only answer
is rain, cold as the years
that stretch behind us, blurring
this window far from you.

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Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted from Lost & Found, The Sow's Ear Press, Abingdon, VA, 1994, by permission of the author. Poem copyright © 1994 by Jeff Daniel Marion, whose most recent book is "Ebbing & Flowing Springs: New and Selected Poems and Prose, 1976-2001," Celtic Cat Publishing, 2002. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.