Sentimental Reflection

Crumpled, disappointing substitute

For any kind of letter from anyone at all,

Here's nothing in the mailbox except an Alumni

Monthly, coming unwanted as usual,

Like some poor dog that will get no praise for pursuit.

Tear the thin brown wrapper, and inspect

Without approval, the picture of college stone

Or college faces; then from the slippery sheets

Begin to read the names of people you've known;

Do it in idleness, nothing at all to expect.

Begin, though, to see that old scene

Of foothill and fir tree, marvelous fall air.

View implies a viewer, you realize

-And here's yourself, as you used to walk there,

Yourself minus fifteen years, what you have been.

Flowers may not turn with suns, but men turn

Sometimes to look at years; the difference

Between then and now is the cant of your face

Toward that intervening sequence

Of time, that chunk checking your own return.

If value's much defined by scarcity,

Oneself, in the fix of this or that old year,

Is valuable, and not in Narcissus' terms,

W. R. MOSES:

When really got back, and seen clear:

Carbon's a jewel, when its type's a rarity.

Brown wrapper, composition of a butcher's sack,

Contains real meat and blood, and they are your own.

A letter, to give you portion of someone else,

Is a happier take, but this is a rarer one,

Letter to yourself, from the hard-known back track.

W. R. Moses