| |
The Experiment
(Graduation poem)
There has been nothing like us before.
Proud of our eccentricity,
we are--whatever else we be--
uniquely the Class of Sixty-Four.
Ergo: In summing up our past,
we marvel at the bold intent
that juxtaposed the Hermes group
with status-quo Apollo's troupe,
and seemed to think that it would last.
So, we conclude, someone was bent
on having an experiment.
The prospect looked a little dim.
Oh, the equipment was the best--
but somehow the rumor went around
that the theory behind it was none too sound,
and although the experimenters knew
their job, it nonetheless was true
that the plan was something of a whim,
and we were, after all, a test--
conclusions being as yet unguessed.
So we were not too much perturbed
to find the elements would not blend;
lacking, perhaps, a catalyst,
but with no hint of what we missed,
we looked apathetic, undisturbed,
watching our reputation tend
toward some unknown, ungodly end.
What else could anyone expect
from an Experimental Class,
but water battles in the halls,
and rioting that shook the walls;
Hermes' Hub-ite oratory,
Apollo in the dormitory,
muttering conservatism;
democracy explored to schism;
tradition battered, blow by blow,
and a new academic low?
And that is just what came to pass;
the gloomy prophets were correct.
But still, the experiment's effect--
Through four long years of strife and stress,
through days of talk and nights of toil,
we have, from verge of revolution,
come, at least, to a kind of solution;
though never chemically combined,
now in our seniorhood we find
a bond that holds us side by side
and close to what we've long defied.
Perhaps it was our friction's heat
that fused us--But the thing's complete,
the long experiment is done,
and now a new one has begun;
the whole wide world we'll soon embroil.
Then was it failure or success?
Let Agnes--and the future--guess!
June 1964
The Experiment Revisited
(10th reunion)
What can be said about Jello ten years old?
That it quivers less, can bear the kitchen's heat
without dissolving, sways but remains complete
when poked, and is no longer cold?
And that, when they made this batch, they broke the mold.
Long gone (if indeed they ever did exist)
the makers of the formula for us,
long gone their hinted-at experiment,
our paranoia and our discontent
at thinking ourselves puppets in some hand.
Long gone are Hermes and Apollo grand;
it seems we really followed Proteus,
and changing, vanished ere we were dismissed.
Who would have known us, hidden in this life,
the dailiness of office, home, or school,
our collective sparkle fragmented and dark?
Who would have recognized our erstwhile spark,
pushing the shopping cart, the stroller, or the pen
from weary day to night, and back again?
Like others, we have warred on war, have wed,
and got degrees, borne babies, toiled--and so to bed,
and waked to wonder at that social rule
which smoothes a prickly person into wife.
We have had causes and careers, have won
and lost, have studied, painted, written, sung,
sought God--and ourselves--in just as many ways
as we are persons. For ten years of days,
oblivious of shared preposterous past,
we have moved out, each one, both far and fast
from that experiment, which here begun,
upon an unsuspecting world was flung.
Then did the experiment succeed, have we
in coming here again some theory proved?
Surely our several worlds we've shaped and moved;
together we shine again quite brilliantly.
But ultimate results? Ten years won't show,
and it will always be too soon to know.
April 1974
Invisible
(15th Reunion)
At graduation everybody cried--
Some with regret for all they'd leave behind,
Some with relief at last to get away
From "sheltering arms" that held them close confined;
Weeping, we stode into that bright new day,
Still with invisible Harvey as our guide.
How could we follow what we could not see,
How find a way that was not charted clear?
Indeed, we've faltered, stumbled now and then,
Finding the goal most evanescent when
Success seemed certain and fulfillment near;
We are not Superwomen, nor were meant to be.
Watching our children, or our young careers,
Change as the seasons turn, grow strong and fine,
Is sometimes frightening, but rather grand
And something, at least, that we can understand--
Our days all present or accounted for,
Compiled in order for posterity,
Measured as we can measure what we see,
Pointing to what the future has in store.
We view our lives in one unbroken line
Visible clearly through these fifteen years
Since we set out through graduation tears.
Yet guided still by something still unseen,
Our lives, we see, are more than meets the eye.
That choice, now long ago, and all in fun--
Invisible Harvey as our muse, our name--
Frivolity aside, transcends the game.
We gather here, and wonder of each one,
What silent triumph, or what secret pain,
What thoughts concealed behind familiar face,
What untold dreams are with us in this place?
What's hidden tells us more than what is plain;
"We always were a mystery!" we cry,
Thankful, despite the years that intervene,
That even in this time we cannot see
Where Harvey leads, or what our fate will be.
April 1979
Changing
(20th Reunion)
"You haven't changed at all!" somebody cries--
Meaning, beneath the subtly-silvered hair,
The altered map time has begun to trace
Across a once-unmarked and girlish face,
The ounce of extra padding here and there,
Remains a girl one still might recognize.
That eager girl of twenty years ago,
Ready to change the world, or her own life,
Or everybody's mind, at least, about her strength,
Found change immediate, and change at length;
Her days, her years indeed with change were rife--
But not always the kind she hoped to show.
A better world, more peaceful and more just,
A future free of poverty and fear--
Elusive such bright alterations proved
As through these rapid twenty years we've moved,
Changing the things within our power to change--
Diapers, jobs, husbands, how we style our hair,
The TV channel, or our brand of soap,
Our church, our dress size--Shall we now despair
At all the change with which we could not cope,
At all the things we failed to rearrange?
Do we now plan a future more austere,
Consigning all our girlish dreams to dust?
Perhaps--but we have sons and daughters now,
Nearly as old--or young--as we were then;
Their dreams might be the catalyst to make
Some new experiment--for they know how
To change us more than we have changed from when
We first set out, our world's old forms to break.
And still remains that changing, unchanged girl--
Twenty years hence, and under grayer hair
She may be hidden, but she will be there:
The only face we'll ever see as strange
Is one that, with the years, refused to change.
April 1984
Fast-Forward
(25th Reunion)
A Quarter-Century--dismaying phrase!
It cannot possibly have been so long
Since we paraded through the sun-filled quad,
Beneath our tasselled caps so proudly odd,
Sure that a different drummer beat our song,
Ready to go uniquely brilliant ways.
This twenty-fifth reunion ought to be
A looking back at all that we've achieved,
Fulfillment of the dreams which we believed.
Yet looking back, we find it hard to see
Exactly what we've done, or when, or how,
Because the years have carried us so fast;
And now a quarter-century has passed
Before we had a chance to look around,
Fast-forward, till the tape runs into now,
A blur of colored light and fractured sound.
Freeze-frame. We glimpse the days of all our lives,
The nurseries, classrooms, bedrooms, boardrooms, all
The scenes from all the dramas we have played:
Motherhood, work, love fleeting, love enduring,
Battles domestic or political,
Prayers at the bedside of disease past curing--
And through these pictures in the mind displayed
The still-familiar pattern that survives.
Though bodies grow less eager to explore,
Still we continue our experiment,
Blending in risky ways, untried before,
Disparate dreams, conflicting points of view.
O Harvey, muse that we alone can see,
O Agnes, in your second century,
Keep us still fractious, ever discontent,
Prove the as-yet-untested theory true--
Nothing like us has been or is to be!
And in the next quarter-century, we'll look
At what we do in every scene we play,
Accounting for each moment of each day,
So we may learn exactly what it took
To give us our discordant harmony.
Till then, fast-forward--we're still on our way!
April 1989
Surprise
(30th Reunion)
Surprise, by now, should come as no surprise:
Didn't we baffle us our first four years,
weren't we, indeed, what no one had in mind?
Thirty years further on, of course we find
that unexpectedness thrives unabated;
the future glimpsed through graduation tears
has not unfolded as anticipated--
history, it seems, would have it otherwise.
History outside has been surprise enough--
black, brutal headlines pounding, shock on shock;
riot and war, live in the living room;
the neighborhood grown ominous and rough;
a stream of erstwhile heroes in the dock;
the threnody of all impending doom--
and in the midst of that, a wall brought down;
old enemies grown weary of the fight,
monsters unmasked as mortals in the light;
virtue now news enough to win renown.
History inside our lives has shocked us, too--
we've met ourselves in unexpected places;
finding the mantle of authority
suddenly fits without an alteration;
rising to play the roles that are our due,
praying the "Yes!" of inward exultation,
young in new challenges, till uneasily
we glimpse again the mirror's aging faces;
startled by ways the body can betray;
wrestling with wounds, bearing with grace the mark
of struggles seldom ending with the dawn;
choosing to stay the course--or walk away,
hoping to seize the moment to move on
before the road ahead becomes too dark.
We're tired, we are astonished to confess--
surely it's not--so soon--the weight of years!
We shake our heads, we diagnose it--stress,
the spirit's stretch-marks from too much surprise:
The children come unfledged; the business fails,
and body follows suit; the marriage lies
in shambles; parents want parenting.
And yet we are amazed to find we bring
a fresh anticipation to each day;
for every dark surprise that fuels our fears,
we are consoled, at least, that nothing stales--
we've kept predictability at bay.
We have this gift--living in black-and-white,
expecting to be astonished, when the door
opens on hues extravagant and bright,
and daily, we're not in Kansas anymore.
April 1994
Learning
(35th reunion poem)
Remember how it felt to know it all
(which we surely did, having just graduated)?
There must have been a week or two, at least,
prior to grad school, or first-time employment
(that survey course in things we couldn't do),
when we were the wisest creatures God created,
enlightened so for our--and God's--enjoyment,
replete with four years' academic feast,
leaving no room for what we never knew--
and riding, inevitably, for a fall.
Remember the dismal shock of ignorance?
Children that came without a syllabus,
no Owner's Manual to explain a mate,
or time's unraveling of our DNA,
or the weird ways the world has turned of late
(El Niño's turbulence an outward mark
of storms that scour the landscape of our lives),
or why our paths proceed in fits and starts,
blocked by debris, and often through the dark,
instead of the straight line decreed for us
(we thought) when starting, learnéd, on our way
to playing all the educated parts--
don't ask what of past learning still survives
too little pomp and too much circumstance!
And now impends the new millennium--
just when we'd learned to set the VCR,
collect our e-mail, maybe surf the net,
we're told the whole shebang is doomed to fail.
We may go back to candles and a well,
and learn again to tell time by the sky,
travel on foot, or stay just where we are--
or maybe they'll get the software working yet,
evading this Armageddon's taste of hell--
but we will learn. However ends the tale
of the two thousand years now rushing by,
there's bound to be some tough exam to come.
Ready for testing? Maybe, maybe not--
but failure's class has taught us who we are,
and as we've advantageously forgot
much that we knew was true in '64,
certain uncertainties assure us either/or will not apply now. With some trepidation
(no, plain fear), weariness--and delight--
we claim our pilgrimage to ports afar,
knowing at this age (ours and earth's) we might
be ready to begin our education.
Mary W. Cox
April 1999
The Story
(40th reunion)
It hasn’t been a boring tale so far—
or not to us—this saga of our days
since we stood, brilliant, in the morning light,
awaiting the diplomas and the praise,
poised, as are all the young, to set things right.
Now here in Chapter Forty, as we are,
looking at how the tale has turned, or not,
though redefining what we mean by “old”,
we wonder if it is, in fact, too late
for characters like us to change the plot,
when all our mirrors taunt there’s no debate
that more than half our story has been told.
So many scenes we’d rather not recall—
the world unsaved—indeed, grown likely worse.
Yeats’ beast comes slouching through the daily news,
and endlessly, we see the towers fall.
Voices that haunt the hours before the dawn
come wailing loss and whispering defeat,
the scary plotlines that we can’t reverse,
failed opportunities and loves—the spawn
of dark decisions that we can’t unmake.
So many times we know we’ve missed our cues,
losing the dreams that might have been complete;
there are some roads that now we’ll never take.
But oh, we’ve had our triumphs on the way,
seen hopes bloom unexpected, and success
dazzle through daily conscientious duty;
emerged victorious from the bitter fray,
and from some tangled and ungodly mess
drawn trophies that resembled Truth and Beauty.
We’ve birthed the future: flung our DNA,
or maybe just our souls, into the mix
as legacy of those who “could not jell”,
presuming we’ll posthumously convey
some wholeness to a world we’ve failed to fix--
a story generations hence will tell.
And all our chapters here are far from ended;
we find, despite the voices fallen still,
the sudden haltings of the narrative,
this tale moves ever onward as it will,
and will amaze with twists not yet portended.
There are new stories we’ve begun to live,
old tales of aging that we must defy.
Listen—“To be continued…” is our cry!
April 2004
Portrait
(45th reunion)
Someone will see our picture, years from now,
on wall or website, tucked in a dresser drawer—
these women lined obediently in rows,
orderly as we weren’t in ’64,
smiling as if we were not wondering how
we’d come through all these years to take that pose.
Mothers and lovers, movers and shakers—all
who strode out boldly from that distant June,
took on the worlds we knew then—adding those
that, unanticipated, soon arrived.
We learned to lie in each hard bed we chose;
we danced, whatever piper called the tune,
knowing that there are worse fates than to fall,
proud that we have endured, prevailed—survived.
Look at those faces, lined (or not) and wonder:
Is she a cougar, matriarch, or crone,
or just her own true self, at last on stage?
Showing our scars (what’s human grows by healing),
fearing no private shame that needs concealing,
we know we haven’t come this far alone,
nor unaccompanied will turn tomorrow’s page—
and we have plans, before they plow us under!
Oh, there is work we would not leave undone;
still mysteries to pursue and souls to grow;
children, grandchildren, new loves just begun—
here on the cusp of what we do not know,
we hope that we may still have far to go.
Yet something is shifting. Even as we stand,
still looking forward into April light,
“Old” is a name we’re trying on for size.
Not that there’s any hurry toward the night,
but now and then some errant thoughts arise
of what might last of everything we’ve planned.
“So well-preserved,” they’ll say. How could they see?
It’s just that we’re so new at being old--
and so experienced at being new--
that all those fractious girls we used to be
and all the stories that our lives have told,
caught by the camera’s eye, shine fresh and true.
“Move closer,” the photographer is saying.
We are. We have been. And it’s how we’re staying.
April 2009
|
