What's New?
by Alexander L. Karan
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1998 09:58:56 -0400

It is a terrible question
but I can't stop asking.

Months, years pass as moments
between conversations.
As we pause to consider (what next?),
friends move at the speed of marriage,
careers, and parenthood through their lives.

So it turns out after all that we were not older
then than we are now, nor wiser
and although some of us are
thirty something we can still be trusted,
generally and in most cases moreso than ever.

We can be trusted to think
of each other occasionally and can be useful
to each other without having to say a word.
As it truns out, it is not what is new
that we need to hear, although that is interesting;

it is confirmation that we are essentially recognizable,
dependable to be strikingly affirmative
of each other's recollections no matter what is new.
What's next?
it is safe to disappear into our lives.
 

Alexander Karan
June 1998